Dave Koppenhaver

From RE 5532: Technology-Supported Literacy

Links to My Professional Tech Use

Dave Koppenhaver has taught this class, RE 5511: Literacies (New and Old) and one like it that is not an online course, RE 5532: Tech-Supported Literacy, for the last several years as electives in Appalachian State's Reading Program. He is a professor in the Reading Program with interests in the literacy learning and instruction of children with significant disabilities.--Koppenhaverd 16:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is the link to Appalachian State University.

Here is a link to a plain English description of what wikis are.

Tech Autobiography

Home Technologies. An alarm clock and coffee pot are the essential technologies that help me start the day right. Not a tech but a text, the morning newspaper makes a nice contribution as well. A refrigerator keeps my food fresh. A stove, a microwave, and a toaster oven all contribute to the quality of my breakfast experience, and a dishwasher makes me feel good about the whole experience. Two technologies, dehumidifiers and ceiling fans, mean that my home is wonderfully comfortable through the summer and early fallo without closing up the house and running an air-conditioner, which we don't have. One technology, a relatively new furnace, keeps us warm at other times, and is much cleaner and less work than the woodstove we gave to friends when we moved here. One additional technology, a radon reduction system, enables my family to live safely in the NC mountains where levels are often dangerously high in homes otherwise.

I've learned not to hate the intrusion of cellphones in my life. They are useful to me in the following ways: graduate students can reach me efficiently, my wife can call me to dinner from our basement study without screaming her lungs out, my wife can text grocery lists to me, and my sons are more likely to respond to text messages from me than calls from any other source.

And how could I forget perhaps the most important home technology in recent use, the Dog Silencer Pro. My wonderfully thoughtful neighbors had something in the neighborhood of a dozen dogs, which barked long and loud for a variety of reasons at all hours of the day and night. I mounted the Dog Silencer Pro on a tree in my backyard closest to the dogs. The dogs reduced their barking, and if I pushed the extender button when they wouldn't quit, they did within a minute or so.

Work Day on Campus. My calendar used to be on a Palm Pilot that was backed up on my computer. The Palm Pilot died years ago, but I continue to use the software on my computer to organize my life. Some plusses: only having to enter recurring events once (not repeatedly as in my paper and pencil days), being able to easily schedule months and years into the future, always being able to read the entry (my handwriting has been a lifelong problem from keeping me off the elementary school honor roll to trying to decipher comments on papers for students to not being able to read my own notes...). I'm intrigued by the iPhone but not enough to change my phone service to AT & T, an expensive and near-useless phone service in the mountains of NC.

My laptop accompanies me to work, keeping my digital life relatively unified and definitely more organized than my real life. It is way easier to file and organize digitally than in real life. I have stacks everywhere in both my home and university offices. My laptop contains readings for my research and teaching, my syllabi and lesson plans. It's my life to the internet when I meet with students at Higher Grounds, because it has three major technological advantages over my office: a wonderful coffeemaker, wireless internet that actually works (it does not work in my basement corner office at Appalachian), and no mismatch between the number of automotive technologies and the number of available spaces to park them. Not to mention an abundance of uncluttered work spaces.

Tech-Supported Leisure. A pedometer and treadmill, not to mention the color tv with Direct TV satellite reception, are essential technologies in my exercise program. Right now I'm watching a preview of the Ohio State-USC football game and the ECU-West Virginia football game on my laptop on [ESPN 360] while listening to the Appalachian football game on our home computer via a [Radio Shark], an external device that lets my computer broadcast radio through a USB connection.

Video and Photography. I used a waterproof disposable camera to take great photos of my family at the beach last summer, and I'm hoping to get a [Flip Camera and the [waterproof housing] to take videos in the waves and on the beach next summer. I take videos of my sons playing basketball and edit them on iMovie. This season I'm going to record the game broadcasts of the games off the Radio Shark broadcasts and insert them into the audio tracks.

To be continued...