By Emily Temple
Transcript Correspondent
On Monday, Oct. 7, the Ohio Wesleyan Education Department celebrated the opening of the Short Family Multimedia Lab in Phillips Hall.
This donation was the first donation the department has received in the 14 years that Paula White, professor of education and the department’s chair, has been employed at the university.
“We anticipate this impact will have a ripple effect that results in increased PreK-12 student learning,” she said. “I plan to use the lab with students in my methods courses who are learning and developing their range of instructional techniques.”
This donation from Mary Carol and Jack Short will give education majors the opportunity to further their learning through technology.
This new lab will provide opportunities for students to develop their pedagogical technology skills. It will especially be helpful to seniors in the program who are student teaching by allowing them to use iMovie video editing software to make their videos for the edTPA, a new program that is implemented across many universities in the state of Ohio.
The lab includes ten iMacs, a printer and an Apple TV. The Apple TV allows students and professors to connect wirelessly via airplay eliminating the need for expensive projectors.
The iMacs are fully loaded with word processing software, iMovie software and much more. White said if there is something else the department wanted to add, there is always “an app for that.”
A large part of the lab is the iMovie software allowing student teachers to edit their required video for their edTPA submissions in their final semester.
Senior Bethany Mann, an early childhood education major said the resources will help her greatly in getting ready for her graduation and future career and in completing the edTPA project.
“I am extremely excited to use the lab to further my education experience and prepare for my future as an educator,” she said.
The Short family has a long legacy of producing OWU graduates that totals to 92 years, with the most recent graduate in the class of 2010.