Current Projects and Research

Jim Siegl, Technology Architect, Education

Mobile Devices (iPod Touch, iPad, Kindle, etc.) Projects
  1. iPod Touch as a Content Delivery Tool: University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce.  As part of the 2009 Master's program in Information Technology, the McIntire School of Commerce provided each of the 94 members of the cohort with an iPod Touch. Course readings were scanned and converted to audio podcasts using text-to-speech. Designed program implementation, execution, and recommendations for supporting technology, program evaluation criteria and user surveys.
  2. iPod Touch in K-12, Technical Evaluation Report (Author) This report has been used by a number of K12 school districts in their planning process for large iPod deployments. This address the technical issues as well as the legal, logistical and software/apps purchase issues related to large scale deployment.
  3. iPod Touch in K-12, Field Assessments/Pilots (Principal Technical Investigator). Fairfax County Public Schools has conducted   field assessment to further evaluate the use of the iPod in the classroom. A Field Assessment is a research experiment where the deliverable is a better understanding of the instructional value, and the business and technical impact of an emerging technology, rather than a deployed product or service.  Field Assessments to date include:
    1. Middle School, Six Month study: in which the iPod Touch was given to a team of 125 Middle School students and their teachers for use across the curriculum.
    2. Assistive Technology:  Grant funded research to evaluate the iPod Touch as an alternative for expensive assistive technology devices using the Proloquo2go application.
    3. Young Scholars Summer Program: The DC Tourism office partnered with students in Young Scholars program to produce podcasts using the iPod Touch
    4. High School 11th Grade English Class: Six week study, used the iPod Touch to create reflective journal blog posts and explore its use as a student response system
    5. High School CTE (Career and Technical Education): Six week study with Engineering students. The iPod Touches facilitated the on site collection of data from a rocket launching which took place on the school’s football field. 
      lectures which were then posted as course content online. 
    6. 5th Grade Class: Six week study, used the device to explore geography using Google earth
    7. iPod touch in the English as a Second Language (ESOL) Class
    8. iPod Touch for borrowing library audio books (Elementary school 1 year pilot)
    9. Individual Middle Schools Class (2 Middle Schools, 6 week evaluation): One of the school based support staff published their observations in this article in Edweek
  4. Reviewer, Kindle Grant Proposal: Kindles to be used in the classroom to support below grade-level readers.
 
Cloud Computing (Google Apps, Microsoft Live@EDU)
  1. Google Apps for Education Evaluation Report (Author)
  2. Google Apps for Education Field Assessment (Principal Technical Evaluator): One year pilot of Google Docs as a collaboration tool in a Middle School with 1200 students.
  3. Instructional Design for Google Apps for Education as a tool for Collaboration in a K12 Professional Learning Community (Coauthor)
  4. Technical Proof of Concept: Single Sign-on to Google Apps for Education with an on-premise LDAP directory using SAML 2.0 and Novell Access Manager.
 
Other Research Areas:
  • Mobile Devices and iPod/iPad in Education
  • Lecture Capture and Podcasting (Echo 360, Camtasia Relay, iTunes U etc.)
  • Web Conferencing
  • 1:1 Computing
  • Text to Speech
  • Online Textbooks/eBooks
  • Electronic Commerce/ePayment/eBilling
  • Identity and Access Management
 
Presentations
  1. iPods and Text to Speech Course Readings, Connected Conference 2009, Abilene Christian University. Lightning talk presentation on the deployment of the iPod Tough at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce as a way of distributing course readings as audio podcasts.
  2. Executive Briefing: Presentation to FCPS Superintendent Dr. Jack Dale and staff on trends in educational content delivery and mobile devices.
  3. Guest Lecture, Virginia Tech, Graduate School of Education:  Icebergs on the Horizon, Opportunities and Challenges of Emerging Educational Technologies (7/21/2010)
  4. Executive Briefing to the Jefferson Overseas Technology Institute on Google Apps for Education and research on the implementation in a large institution
  5. Session Convener: Educause Mid Atlantic Conference 2010, The Amazon Kindle DX Pilot at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business