curriculum vitae
 
 


 
 

 


link to full CV

Career / Research Goals:

My primary goal is to work with fellow university faculty, graduate students, and public school teachers and students on the design, development, implementation and research of experimental technologies that draw on and put to work a range of ideas typically peripheral to or at odds with common narratives/discourses of school, learning, literacy and technology. I am also interested in tracking the ways various narratives or discourses of school, learning, literacy, and technology play out in public school classrooms.

Education:

  • PhD in Curriculum & Instruction ~ Instructional Technology. University of Texas at Austin, (June 2011).
  • Master of Education in Technology Innovation In Education. Harvard University, (June 2004).
  • Master of Education in Curriculum & Instruction ~ Bilingual Education. University of Houston, (May 2001).
  • BA in Spanish, Scandinavian Studies Minor. Mankato State University, Mankato, Minnesota, (June 97).

Research and Working Group Membership:

  • Digital Spaces Working Group (2006-Present).
  • Language Learning and Technology Design Group (2007-Present).

Employment & Consulting History:

  • Division of Instructional Innovation & Assessment, University of Texas at Austin, (2008 - Present)
  • Distance Education Department, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (2005 - 2007).
  • Crespo Elementary, Houston Independent School District, Houston, TX (1998 - 2003).

Grant Work:

  • Innovative Ubiquitous Learning Design & Development Grant. $500 (2007)
  • After School Achievement Program. $20,000 (2003-2004).
  • Texas Infrastructure Fund Special Projects Grant. $40,000 (2002-2003).
  • After School Achievement Program. $30,000 (2002-2003).
  • Houston ISD Technology Integration Grant. $5,000 (2001-2002).
  • After School Achievement Program. $40,000 (2001-2002).

Journal Articles, Reviews & Book Chapters:

  • Liu, M., Horton, L., Olmanson, J., & Wang, P. Y. (2008). An Exploration of Mashups and Their Potential Educational Uses. Computers in the Schools.

  • Olmanson, J. (2007). Review of eSpindle Vocabulary & Spelling Program online. Language, Learning & Technology, 11, 18-28. [html] [pdf]

Conference Presentations:

  • Technology in the Creative and Participatory Literacy Practices of a Second Grade Classroom (Vol. 2010). Presented at the ED-MEDIA 2010-World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Toronto, Canada: AACE.
  • On Initiating Maintaining and Growing an Affinity Based Student Led Research and Design Group (Vol. 2010). Presented at the ED-MEDIA 2010-World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Toronto, Canada: AACE.
  • FunWritr an Online Language and Literacy Playground (Vol. 2010). Presented at the ED-MEDIA 2010-World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Toronto, Canada: AACE.
  • Launched into outer space yet tethered to earth: PBL science curriculum within middle school milieus. Presented at the Understanding Complex Ecologies in a Changing World 2010 Annual Meeting, Denver, CO: American Educational Research Association.
  • The Strong Case for Weak Theory: Unrealized Roles for New Ethnography in Educational Technology Research. In Disciplined Inquiry: Education Research in the Circle of Knowledge (p. 372). San Diego, CA: American Educational Research Association.
  • When Naïve Notions of the Efficient Qualitative Education Researcher Get in the Way: Tracking how discourses of efficiency, quality and [new] ethnography collided in a pilot study. In American Education Studies Association Annual Conference 2008. Savannah, GA: educationalstudies.org.
  • Designing Distributed Biography: co-constructing a polyphonic application on borrowed time. Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication, Annual Conference, El Paso, Texas. October 22-24, 2007. [pdf] [presentation]
  • Improving Your Serve: consuming and using educational research. Church of the Lutheran Confession, Annual Teacher's Conference, Mankato, Minnesota. October 20, 2006.

Societal Affiliations:

  • American Educational Research Association.
  • Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education
  • International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society.
  • American Anthropological Association.
  • Texas Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Volunteer work:

  • Classroom Technology Integration Consultant, An Austin ISD Elementary School (2007 - Present).
  • Registration Support, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Los Angeles, California (2007).
  • Registration and Technology Support, TexTESOL 2006 State Conference, Austin, Texas (2006).
  • Webmaster for The Appian, Harvard Graduate School of Education Student Newspaper, Cambridge, MA (2003).
  • Webmaster for Dr. Jim Cummins, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario (1999 - 2004).

Language Study:

 Human:

  • Spanish.
  • Norwegian.

 Computer:

  • Python.
  • PHP.
  • mySQL.
  • HTML.
  • LISP.

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