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Al Rowell

Page history last edited by locotech 14 years, 1 month ago

 

About Al Rowell

 

 

Contact Info:

Lowndes County Schools

arowell@lowndes.k12.ga.us

229-316-1864

Blog: http://www.lowndes.k12.ga.us/alrowell

Website: http://www.lowndes.k12.ga.us/alrowell

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/locotech

 

My new favorite picture. :)  From our June 2009 Teach 21 class.

About Me:

I have been fortunate to have been associated with the Lowndes County Schools for more years than I like to admit some times. I graduated from Lowndes High School in 1980, and barely three years later I found myself back at LHS student teaching with Carol McLeod and Juanita Miller. Mr. John Feazell had the temerity to hire me at 20 years young to teach English and journalism at Lowndes High. I still am inordinately proud of the many accomplishments of my students, especially my students on the SAGA, Lowndes High's award-winning newspaper. The highlights of my years teaching at LHS were being named STAR Teacher in 1987 by Roland Hall and being selected LHS Teacher of the Year in 1996. I also was fortunate to teach in the area of computers at the Georgia Governor's Honors Program in 1997.

I transitioned into technology during the nineties, first working half-time teaching and half-time providing technology support for Lowndes High and Westside Alternative School. I then went fulltime with Owen Prince, Mary Anderson, and Ashley Forthe as part of the Lowndes County Schools Technology Department. Over time my role has changed to coordinator and now director. My principal objective is providing the teachers and students of the Lowndes County Schools with the information, materials, and support to improve instruction and to provide a world-class education for our students.

I also enjoy serving as chaperone, photographer, and webmaster for the Georgia Bridgemen, Lowndes High's marching band. I am married to Sandra Smith Rowell (LHS Class of '80), and we have two children:  Alison graduated from LHS in 2006,and her brother, Alex, is a junior at LHS. 

 

A Positive Experience with Instructional Technology:

In the early years of technology explorations in education, I was asked to joing a CocaCola Grant project with Valdosta State University. My students in a senior English class studied philosophy.  My students published their study of their respective philosophers on the web.  Okay, that doesn't sound impressive, but you try handcoding in HTML using PFS Professional Write on Windows 3.11 computers.  :)  We started with a template for their philosophers, which they edited.  The best experience was a mock IRC chat.  In the persona of their philosophers, they responded to questions about current events ina chat format. I have to admit that we ended up using Word, so it was not exactly an online experience.  I would love to replicate this experience, perhaps using Google Docs (Or Google Wave would be AMAZING for this!). Also, I would bring in an outside authority from a university to join the students and respond to their work.

 

Interests:

  • Open Source software 
  • Poetry
  • Web collaboration (wikis, websites, Google Docs)

 

My Teach 21 Project

Overview.  I have started a wiki at poetrytech.wetpaint.com to bring together resources for teachers on using poetry in activities that develop student creativity and analysis.  I intend to develop this wiki with contributions from teachers in our district first, and then to open it to public contribution.  As a culminating activity, I intend to partner with classroom teachers on a collaborative creative activity that I hope will involve students in other countries.

 

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