My background: Ph.D. Cornell University 1984 in development anthropology.
Technical advisor in planning 1984-1989. Research analyst for Los Angeles
Community College District 1989-1996. Occasional teaching in anthropology in
the U.S. and Peru.
Parent and go player.
I work in applied social/educational research. Currently my work has two
primary directions:
(a) research on student pathways in community colleges: currnently
completing the analyses for a small Spencer Foundation funded project
focused on basic skills (remedial) student outcomes. Together with my
colleague (GG Pathey-Chavez) we presented on this at the Montreal AERA. We
are soon to be beginning a large, California Community College Chancellor's
Office funded, multi-college, intersegmental (community college and CSU
systems)
longitudinal study of student pathways. This study will articulate the
analysis of student transcripts with classroom based action research. The
research is particularly focused on students who enter college with little
or no "academic culture". Our objective is to improve the teaching-learning
process so they can achieve their goals and/or discover new horizons of
goals to be pursued.
(b) In conjunction with The Ink People Center for the Arts in Eureka,
California, I am working
on the development of the Redwood Artists Information Network (RAIN) in
Humboldt County, California. This is a project involving the development of
nine public access computer locales with broad band, wireless connection to
the internet and full multimedia capabilities. We have pending grant
applications with the Dept of Education and the Dept. of Commerce (TIAPP)
Access to the public access internet locales is
oriented toward low-income youth. who I sometimes think of as the new lumpen
proletariat created through the demise of the once prosperous timber
industry working class. (No more forests to cut down or mills to slice them
up in). They will have the opportunity participate in group arts projects
developed for the internet (webcasts, online galleries, research, webradio
productions, etc.). In addition to helping develop the grant proposals, I
will conduct the evaluation so it comes off as something of a field project
on the introduction of cyberculture into a primarily working class
environment.
I am also active in the development of community currencies in the Humboldt
Bay area. In particular, a fully computerized LETS multi-registry system
sponsored by The Ink People and (hopefully) an integral component of RAIN.
I am hoping to be able to discuss some of the issues involved in the RAIN
evaluation on XMCA where so much good thinking and discussion about tools
and learning and computer mediated interaction, among other topics, has
taken
place.
Paul H. Dillon