Student becomes teacher at Advanced TTL

Amber Johnson, a May 2000 graduate of Dakota State University came back to Madison to teach at the Governor’s Advanced TTL classes. Johnson was a computer education major at DSU and has been working in Flandreau this past year. She is teaching 15 sessions on how to use a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA, also known as a palm pilot) for Advanced TTL.

In her session are two of her former teachers from DSU. Linda Venekamp and Vicki Sterling, both assistant professors of education at DSU. “She’s great,” said Venekamp. “She’s an excellent teacher. We did a good job.”

“One thing is we always learn from our student’s, especially when it comes to computers,” added Venekamp. “I feel really strongly that we learn from our students.”

“She’s showing us different ways to do the same thing,” said Sterling about Johnson.

Johnson was an assistant teacher for TTL for two summers and an assistant for DTL for one summer, prior to becoming an instructor this summer. When asked how she reacted when she found out her former professors were in the class she recalled, “I was super nervous. But I got over being nervous in about one minute.”

“They are all super nice, really supportive and give me extra advice to help me be a better teacher,” added Johnson about her former teachers.

Johnson was originally asked to be a mentor and agreed to be the instructor when a commitment forced another teacher to resign the post. She has been intensely working with palms for a month after becoming fascinated with the gadget.

“I was self-motivated to learn how to use the palm,” said Johnson. “They’re great and are fairly easy to get to know. It’s just like any other computer.”

The two-day palm pilot class includes an introduction, building an address book, beaming business cards to other palm users. Beaming is simply pointing the palm to another palm and sending information. The class also includes learning how to write a “to do” list, setting up a schedule in a date book, note pad, a text only memo pad, putting email on the palm, downloading software from the internet to put on the palm among other applications.

“It’s a basic general information course,” said Johnson. “It’s totally new. They (students) are all excited about it. It’s fun to teach.”

“I’ve had the palm for a year and a half,” said Sterling. “I’m learning things I haven’t had time to learn on my own. It’s an expanded use of what we can do.”

Both Venekamp and Sterling agreed that the palm is a good tool for teachers to use and also a good tool for students to learn about.

“Students need to know about them,” said Sterling. “They need to have an awareness of what’s available.”