<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html lang="en-us"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1250"> <meta name="Generator" content="me!"> <title>PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="djl.css"> </head> <body style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" alink="#ff3300" link="#cc0000" vlink="#330099"> <table width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="left" valign="bottom"><img src="graphics/logo.gif" border="0"></td> <td align="right" valign="bottom"><font face="Arial" size="+2"><b>A Personal Perspective</b></font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <hr color="gray"> <p>History is in the eye of the beholder. There is no "one" true history of any event, only the perceptions of individuals who were there or who have studied it. This is my personal perspective on the history of personal computing at St. Louis Community College. </p> <p> In the early to mid 1980's Jerry Craig and I began introducing personal computers into the Technology Department at Forest Park Community College. At that time these were mostly Apple II models, with a small variety of others that Jerry paid for himself and brought to the school. Not everyone shared Jerry's foresight, and it was said at the time that Jerry "dragged the Technology Department, kicking and screaming, into the 1980's". We were among the first email users in the Junior College District. As I recall the accounts at that time were acquired from RCET via UMSL. I remember something about "rcet013" in the address. </p> <p> Our activities were mostly smiled upon as harmless diversions until in 1982 Dave (T. D.) Daniel and I acquired a couple of large screen projection televisions and began using the Apples as classroom tools. At that point a few other departments saw some possibilities and began either borrowing our classrooms or adding such equipment to their own. Dave also built a campus-wide network (Nestar) at Forest Park, and Apples were popping up all over campus and their users were requesting connections. I believe he was named Innovator of the Year for his efforts -- a true innovator, not just doing his job but predicting what his job would be five years in the future and making it happen. Dave was, of course, the default manager of this network; and later I was given that responsibility for a year or so. We eventually migrated to IBM-style PCs. </p> <p> While I was Campus Computing Coordinator at FP Phil Carlock (Acting Dean of Instruction) asked me to write a position paper outlining how to keep the campus moving into the personal computing future. That paper eventually had three sections: where are we?, where do we need to be?, and how do we get there? </p> <p> One important premise of "getting there" was to encourage individual faculty to explore the possibilities of personal computing and then help others by becoming informal mentors. The idea was to use friendship and collegiality rather than formal classes or rigid workshops. The reward for these pioneers was to be access to newer and faster PCs as they were developed -- remember, these were the days of 286's and 386's, the field was growing at an exponential rate and the hardware really wasn't that expensive. At any rate the faculty just learning the use of personal computers as educational tools were going to need hardware as well, so a "trickle-down" theory was proposed which placed the newest and fastest on the desks of the pioneers while their previous equipment was relocated to the novices. </p> <p> In the end, this proposal was quashed by some individuals beginning to feel their political power, and the newest users also got the newest hardware. The motto became "Punish the Pioneers". <a href="http://mesun4.wustl.edu/ME/faculty/jwc/index.html">Jerry Craig</a> was frustrated and left the Junior College to set up new labs at Washington University, and Dave Daniel went back to full time teaching. </p> <p> In 1988 I taught for one semester at the <a href="http://www.cvut.cz/en/">Czech Technical University</a> ( VUT) in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). The government at that time was Communist and the Russian military headquarters was right across the street from VUT. (When I went for a hair cut I was seated next to Russian officers!) The general atmosphere in town, and by default also at the university, was one of lockdown and <a href="http://www.landiss.com/civillib.htm">general government oppression</a>. There were exceptions, of course, and if one sought them out quietly there was no great penalty. </p> <p> One result of that general lockdown mentality was obvious in the computer lab at VUT. The doors of the computer room were securely locked except during a scheduled class, and students were not permitted in the room except during such classes. I later found a computer hidden away in one of the graduate student labs and they graciously allowed me to schedule time on it. Undergraduates had essentially no way to practice computing skills outside of scheduled class time unless they found the funds and the means to smuggle one in from Poland or Germany and use it at home. One of my students managed to bring one all the way from Sarajevo. </p> <p> I knew at that point that my job when I returned to the States was to make computer learning available to all students, with ample practice time and encouragement. As I was returning the Internet was becoming more popular and I began looking for ways to use it in education. In March 1990 the Department of Defense turned <a href="http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa--1.html">ARPANET</a> over to its users, and this might be counted as the real beginning of the Internet as we know it today. </p> <p> By the early 1990's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berners-Lee">Tim Berners-Lee</a> had fathered HTML and in 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the NCSA developed Mosaic, a browser application for the Internet's World Wide Web. Some people at Saint Louis Community College, especially Mark Sellan downtown, grasped the possibilities immediately and acquired an Internet connection into the College. A lucky few of us were even permitted dial-up modem access to this connection -- I think there were eight incoming modems at the time, so accessibility was variable. </p> <p> It was in 1995 that I first met Mark Sellan and discovered how service-oriented he was, and what a great teacher. He joined the College in October 1995 and had a Web server and SLCC home page up and running by the end of the month. With his help and advice, I built and posted in November <a href="perspective1.html">the first campus home page in the District</a> for Forest Park. Kim Mosley had Flo Valley on line by January 1996 -- since he an artist, his pages always looked better than mine! Look at the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19970418002505/http://www.stlcc.cc.mo.us/">April 1997 version</a> of Kim's work -- nice, isn't it? </p> <p>If we were lucky we could get a 14.4 kbps modem connection, so the emphasis was on minimal file size. In their quest for the flashiest animations and fanciest design, the designers of many current Web pages have forgotten that a large number of users still connect at only twice our speed from 1995. </p> <p> The entrepreneurial spirit and enthusiastic sharing during those early days personal computing at SLCC reflected that of the Internet itself. It was a miniature version of what the atmosphere must have been like in <a href="http://rleweb.mit.edu/rlestaff/p-wiesj-dp.HTM">MIT's Radiation Laboratory</a> during <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684872870/qid=1043595845/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5821604-2800045?v=glance&amp;s=books#product-details">WW II</a>. </p> <p> The new head of the Data Processing Department was somewhat incensed that an engineer would do such a thing, and got campus president Henry Shannon to tell me to take the page down. At the same time Henry created a Web oversight committee to decide how the campus should be represented on line. They (including Carol Shahriary, another Internet pioneer at FP) told me to put it back up again, and Henry supported their decision. </p> <p> Next I created a "users" directory for FP, and started building my own personal pages. A "tech" directory was also created storing probably the first departmental presence on the Web. Information was presented about our electronics, mechanical, robotics and engineering science programs. Information was included about all three campuses. Similar directories were offered to all other departments and individual users. The "fp/users" directory model that I planned (with Mark Sellan's valuable advice) was still used individual pages until about 2006, and the "fp/xxxx" model for departments is still in use. </p> <p> In January 1998 I was reassigned to the Florissant Valley campus, and began migrating the Technology Department Web site to FV. It was still configured as a District-wide Engineering and Technology site, but with an emphasis on FV because the message from downtown was to phase out technology programs at the other two campuses. Our department chair wanted a fancier Web presence and my "fv/eng&amp;tech" pages were removed and replaced with <a href="http://stlcc.edu/fv/engtech">the new design</a>. </p> <p> In general (with a couple of notable exceptions) there was much less turf-grabbing and empire-building at FV, and colleagues from Art, English, Information Systems, the Library and Media Services all worked together on Web projects. The innovations of that time were in direct proportion to the key players' ability to cut through red tape, just as at the <a href="http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1993/articles/oct_93/octa_93.html">Air Force's</a> infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_works">Skunk Works</a>. This very collegial spirit of service-minded cooperation led to the <a href="http://stlcc.edu/fv/art/text/artprograms.html">Art</a>, <a href="http://stlcc.edu/fv/english/">English</a> and <a href="http://stlcc.edu/fv/math/">Math</a> departments leading the way in the use of personal computers for learning and communications. The rest of us are still playing catch-up. </p> <p> This rosy scenario has not been without problems. As personal computing became more widespread it took on some of the aspects of a managed commodity instead of an innovation. The system can still work if said managers are as aware of the needs of education, as service-minded, and as personally capable as those folks from Art, English, Information Systems, the Library and Media Services. If a manager instead takes the locked-down, regimented, standardization approach; trouble follows. These are not the ways to success in an educational setting. We have come 180° from Mark Sellan's enabling, make-it-possible approach; and that's a tragedy. </p> <p> </p> <center> <hr color="gray"><font face="Arial"><font size="-2">Also visit <a href="index.html">www.landiss.com</a> - Comments to <a href="mailto:dan@landiss.com">dan@landiss.com&nbsp;<img src="graphics/mailbox.gif" align="top" border="0" height="34" width="29"></a></font> </font></center> <p></p> </body> </html>