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INVITED SPEAKER
Multimedia: What's in It for [Engineering] Education?
Rachelle Heller, George Washington Univ., USA
In a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vice President Gore extolled the value of technology and promised more money for research into technology including computer training.
Everyone is promoting the multimedia bandwagon as a free ride to educational successes. This talk will address the routes and landmarks, especially in engineering, that are providing positive impacts on educational processes. And, since one cannot take a journey without encountering a few ruts in the road, the presentation will also present some roadmaps for ensuring a pleasant journey.
 | Rachelle Heller Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department George Washington University |
| Biography B.S. 1964 State University of New York, Stony Brook Dr. Heller has over 20 years of experience in the computer field, including work in industry and teaching at the college level. She coauthored a nationally syndicated newspaper column, "All About Computers" from 1982 to 1986, and has served as an educational computer consultant to the National Geographic Society. Professional Activities Dr. Heller has spoken at computer conferences at the national and international level including the 1981 and 1985 World Conferences on Educational Computing, the LOGO '84 and '85 Conferences in Boston, the 1987 IFIPS WG3.5 Conference on New Technology in Primary Education and the 1988 and 1989 National Educational Computing Conference. She has been the keynote speaker at Hollins College and Coppin State College. She lectured in the Soviet Union on the uses of computers in education at the invitation of the Soviet Academy of Science in the summer of 1986 and the winter of 1989. In the summer of 1988 she was in the Soviet Union as a computer specialist to the USIA exhibit, "Information USA". In addition to authoring and coauthoring numerous papers and technical reports on the uses of computers in mass spectrometry, teacher training and in educational classroom settings, Dr. Heller is the co-author with C. Dianne Martin of Bits 'n Bytes About Computing: A Computer Literacy Primer, the Bits 'n Bytes Gazette for school children and LOGOWORLDS, all published by Computer Science Press, Aleph-BASIC by Kar-Ben Copies, Bible Basic by Standard Press. Dr. Heller is the co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal "Computers & Education: An International Journal" by Pergamon Press. She is a lecturer for the Association of Computing Machinery and the IEEE. Dr. Heller's current research in multimedia is focused on the Multimedia Taxonomy. Research Grants Dr. Heller is the co-principal investigator of four National Science Foundation grants. The first, "Bringing Young Minority Women to the Threshold of Science," is designed to raise the interest of young women to studies in science and engineering. The second, "TEAMSS, Teacher Enhanced Application for Middle School Science with Hypermedia," is designed to enable teachers to use and re-use videodisc technology in their classrooms. FORWARD in SEM is a focus on reaching women for academics, research and development in Science, Engineering and Mathematics. It is an implementation project for the recruitment and retention of women in advanced science, engineering and mathematics careers in conjucntion with Gallaudet University. Curriculum Resources in Interactive Multimedia (CRIM) is a project in conjunction with Professor Ed Fox at Virginia University. She is also the Co-PI for the VISIT System, a multimedia kiosk project designed to provide information about the park and to collect visitor preference data in US National Parks. | |