College of Letters and Science to celebrate 50 years of IT

Fifty years ago, instructional technology consisted of 16 mm films, slide projectors and phonograph records.

While you are trying to recollect what those might have been, Read Gilgen will be only too happy to tell you where IT is now, and where it’s going in the future.

Gilgen directs Learning Support Services (LSS) in the College of Letters and Science. On Friday, Sept. 23, LSS will celebrate 50 years of service and technological evolution.

Gilgen, who has been at the helm of LSS since 1981, says that the technology assisting language learning alone has grown exponentially in just the last decade.

“Instead of coming to a lab to listen to language tapes, students can download lesson materials and play them on their computers or portable MP3 players and iPODs. The vast resources of the World Wide Web provide nearly limitless opportunities for instructors, who can use them in increasingly innovative ways. Today some of our language departments have hundreds of videos and DVDs. When I worked at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the 1970s, we had one copy of ‘Hawaii Five-O’ dubbed in French!” he says.

Gilgen says that the advances in technology have brought with them a change in teaching practices.

“It’s much more comprehensive than the simple ‘drill and kill’ methods of the 60s and 70s,” he says. “Instead of spending time in a lab listening and repeating – students do that on their own now – they create PowerPoint presentations using video, audio and photos from all over the world. Students can chat online with native speakers in other countries. Wikis (server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser) and blogs help them learn collaboratively.”

The establishment of UW–Madison’s campus wide Division of Instructional Technology (DoIT) in the 1990s served to focus the mission of LSS, Gilgen says.

“While DoIT generally focuses on infrastructure needs – networks, course management systems like Learn@UW and so on, we work with individual instructors and experiment with software to develop and deliver the specific instructional materials they need for a particular course,” he says.

Gilgen, who dates his interest in technology to the first grade, sees the use of more technology in classrooms across disciplines in coming years.

“Computers were once feared as teacher replacements. Technology never will replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will replace teachers who don’t. Technology is part of the arsenal available to good teachers,” he says.

“I’m lucky to have lived and taught during a good portion of the technology revolution. For instructors and students alike, these are exciting times, with tools and materials at our disposal that 50 years ago we could only dream about.”