Spend five minutes with Teresita Krueger of IBM’s Industry
Solutions Lab (ISL), and you can tell she enjoys her work.
Teresita, the lab’s ISL Technology Briefing Manager, offers a
first-hand look at the wonders of emerging technology to educators
and business professionals around the world. As she guides visitors
through the Hawthorne, NY, facility, Teresita often seems as amazed
by the technology as her guests.
At the lab on Thursday, March 3, Teresita stood before a display
case packed with examples of patented breakthroughs from IBM
history. Her guests, nearly two-dozen professors and deans from St.
John’s University, learned how IBM’s most recent innovations can
enrich the academic experience for students and faculty alike.
“Essentially, we’re on a fact-finding mission,” said Dr.
Kathleen Vouté MacDonald, Dean of St. John’s College of
Professional Studies. “We’re here to learn how much this
technology can help us in curriculum-building. As a result, we’ll
be better able to attract more of the talented students who will
most benefit from a St. John’s education.”
“We’re interested in the potential for new development and the
future of technology in teaching,” observed Dr. James A. Benson,
Dean and Chief Information Officer at St. John’s. “By strengthening
our University’s partnership with IBM, we’ll move further in that
direction.”
St. John’s has enjoyed a strategic alliance with IBM since 2003.
That year, St. John’s launched its Laptop Program, which provides
wireless IBM ThinkPad™ computers for every entering full-time
freshman and transfer student. IBM has supported the program from
the start. Today, the program’s success is evident in St.
John’s ranking in Intel’s Top-10 “Most Unwired Colleges.” St.
John’s is the only New York-area university to make the list.
St. John’s emphasis on technology is vital in an age of
Collaborative and eLearning, said Yael Ravin, manager of the
Learning Technologies Institute for Advanced Learning at
IBM. “The old model of learning no longer applies,” said
Ravin. “That model focused exclusively on formal classes where
learning was removed from the world of doing. Through technology,
the emerging model emphasizes learning while doing.”
An emerging mode of learning, Ravin suggested, can lead toward a
“best model” in which education integrates all the technologies
available to students and professionals. “Web conferencing, instant
messengering, blogs – anything that fosters a learning-centric
environment,” she explained. “This will provide rich exchanges
without a formal structure. You’ll be able to access experts on
demand in a safe environment that cultivates collaborative
problem-solving.”
According to JoAnn Winson, Program Manager for the IBM Academic
Initiative Software Group, technology-centered learning benefits
professors as well as students. For example, faculty increasingly
enjoy creative access to innovations like Open-Source technology.
Open-source technology is the collaborative development of software
and operating systems whose code is readily and freely available
online.
Describing the growing benefits of learning technologies, Winson
quoted her colleague, Nicholas M. Donofrio, Senior Vice President
for Technology and Manufacturing at IBM. “Nick says it all the
time,” she explained. “It’s not about ‘free,’ it’s about
‘freedom.’”
View the photo
gallery from this event.