Dale LaFrenz
From IAE-Pedia
Contents |
Introduction
Starting in about 1963, Dale LaFrenz was one of the key players as Minneapolis-St. Paul and eventually the State of Minnesota became early leaders in the field of computers in precollege education. When the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was created in 1973, he became the Assistant Director. Quoting from a 1995 interview:
- The Board [of MECC] decide to go to Mankato State University and draft Professor Don Henderson, who was in the computer science department. Don was on loan to MECC for a year -- the first executive director of MECC. I was self-employed and as
soon as I saw the wind was going that way I went to Henderson, reviewed my expertise, and asked for a job. He hired me as a consultant and assigned me to be the assistant director. That's how I got involved day-one with MECC. The first meeting Don and I had was in downtown St. Paul working out of the trunk of his car. That's where we decided what we would do and how to proceed in putting together the organization. Don involved in MECC only the first year.
This is a Work in Progress.
Here is a 9-part rough outline for a Pioneer page. As you create such a page, please make appropriate use of main headings (surrounded by == on each side) sub headings (surrounded by === on each side) and, if you feel it to be appropriate, sub sub headings (surrounded by ==== on each side).
1. General demographic types of information such as birth date and place, education, employment, and so on.
2. Setting the scene. This might go all the way back to the Pioneer's childhood. Try to capture the essence of how the world was before the pioneer began to do his or her pioneering work. Pay particular attention to the levels of Information and Communication Technology, and their use in education, at the time.
3. Major pioneering efforts and contributions. Try to capture the essence of the Pioneer's legacy contributions to the field of ICT in education. Be factual. Provide references if possible.
4. Up close and personal stories about the Pioneer. These can be contributed by many different authors. Try to flesh out the pioneer as a person and his or her contributions as part of the overall human endeavor of developing the field of ICT in education.
5. Autobiographic materials written by the pioneer in the past and/or written especially for this IAE-pedia document.
6. Interview. If the Pioneer is not deceased, try to gather interview information via face to face meeting, phone, or email. Here are three sample interview questions:
Q. Looking back over your pioneering activities, which do you feel best about? What is your legacy?
Q. Drawing upon your years of experience and accumulated wisdom, what do you think are some of the very best ways to improve our current informal and formal educational systems?
Q. What else do you want to say to today's students, teachers, parents, and other people?
7. References. This includes references to sources of information about the Pioneer as well as references to some of the published works or and other activities of the Pioneer.
8. Author or Authors. You are encouraged to include your name as the initial author of the document.
References
Lafrenz - Dale -13 April 1995 40 page Interview (http://special.lib.umn.edu/cbi/oh/pdf.phtml?id=177) CAMP, TIES, MECC, et cetera, et cetera.
Dave Lester's Finding America. Oral History Interview with Dale LaFrenz. Posted 2/6/2008 at http://www.davelester.org/2008/02/06/oral-history-interview-with-dale-lafrenz/. Quoting from the interview:
- MECC dispatched two people out to talk to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were the 21-year-old kids with the new Apple computer. They had already announced their intent to save the world and they were going to help education using the computer. They had no information about what we were doing in Minnesota. They didn’t know anybody was using computers in schools. We told them about MECC and said we’d like to buy five Apple II’s at a special price. They gave us a special price. We brought the five back to Minnesota to sell to Minnesota schools. Minnesota schools not only bought five, but that year we sold over 500 Apple II computers. [...] Moving on to 1980, MECC became the largest seller of Apple computers. And so it happened that Apple got its start in the educational computing business through its Minnesota connection.
