A computer screen is like a little stage
A middle-school English teacher and playwright as author of educational software? Not an unlikely combination, at least not if the author is Werner Liepolt '66.
To Liepolt, “a computer screen is like a little stage,” and these days, the veteran teacher from Westport, Conn., is using this “little stage” to help kids learn and teachers teach. “Even though I am not a programmer, I know what works in computers and education,” says Liepolt, “and that's something often missing in educational software.”
Last summer, Carl Sagan Productions tapped into Leopold's skills and interests to develop a prototype multimedia, Internet K-12 curriculum based on the newly released Cosmos series-The Lost Dinosaurs, Cosmos 1: The First Solar Sail, Leviathan, and Cosmic Africa-all documentary films to be aired on A&E during the next year. “The ideal form of the product,” he says, “will be hybrid DVD, with educators linking to the Cosmos Learning web site to see how their students are doing, and author lessons that can in turn be used by other educators.”
How does he see this kind of learning evolving in the future? “Well, the kind of product I am working on doesn't replace the classroom, but it does it help bring to it the passion of learning, the spark of high intelligence, and imagination and high production values.”
Liepolt got interested in this kind of work about ten years ago, when he went “back to school” at Teachers College, Columbia University, while on sabbatical-cal. “I took pretty well to aspects of multimedia development and the web,” he says. So well, in fact, that he wound up teaching graduate-level courses ranging from multimedia authoring to designing database-driven websites.
The Columbia connection had another benefit. One of his former students was the executive producer in charge of the PBS educational web site at WNET. PBS partnered with a non-profit arm of Disney to produce the Concept-to-Classroom series of online courses aimed at educators. The producer asked Liepolt to write the first one, on multiple intelligence theory. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, who developed the theory, was the resident expert, and so many people logged on during Gardner's live chat that Disney's server farm was overloaded. “That taught a number of people about how powerful education on the Internet is,” Liepolt says.
Since then, Liepolt has prepared several other courses in the series (the Concept-to-Classroom courses can be found at www.wnet.org/wnetschool, an award-winning web site for teachers).
Liepolt also has applied computer technology to curriculum mapping, currently mandated by several state departments of education. Curriculum mapping was once done by papering a wall with sheets of teachers' curriculum maps. Working with middle school and Teachers College colleagues, Liepolt developed the prototype for an Internet-based curriculum mapper called The Cartographer, now being used in more than 200 schools to help teachers and school systems see new relationships among practices. Liepolt also maintains a web site devoted to curriculum mapping (www.cmap.com).
With his unusual skills, Liepolt gets to move around a lot in Westport's school system. For example, a few years ago he taught a top-level sophomore English class, using e-mail and conferencing extensively. “We also built a web site based on our studies of Dickens's Great Expectations. I brought that experience to a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar at The Dickens Center at the University of California at Santa Cruz.” (As a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar, he also created a web site for The Dickens Project there, at humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/index.html.)
Sometimes, his job is working with other teachers to integrate computer technology into their classes. He was asked to serve on two National Educational Technology Standards writing teams (an International Society for Technology in Education project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education). And sometimes, he's involved in trouble-shooting equipment or writing on-line help pages.
The former English literature major has an M.A. from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania; he serves on the boards of advisers for FamilyPC Foundation and Magazine and on the Library of Congress/Ameritech digital library project, and for several years was an Apple Distinguished Educator.
A passion for issues and debate
John J. Castellani '72 is the new president of The Business Roundtable, an association of the chief executive officers of leading U.S. corporations.
Located in Washington, D.C., the Roundtable is probably the leading business group in the world, focusing on major issues from international trade to health care, from the environment to the future of the digital economy. Representing a workforce of more than 10 million employees and $3.5 trillion in revenues, member CEOs are committed to advocating public policies that foster vigorous economic growth and a dynamic global economy.
Castellani believes the Roundtable “can enrich government through dialog and experience-driven solutions” and “can strengthen our democratic system and our economy.”
With a wealth of experience in industry, corporate management, and public affairs, he arrived at the Roundtable following a stint leading the corporate and financial practice at the public relations giant, Burson-Marsteller.
After graduating from Union with a degree in biology, Castellani launched his career at General Electric as an environmental scientist and strategic planner. From GE, he went on to Washington in 1977, becoming vice president for resources and technology at the National Association of Manufacturers. He joined TRW, Inc., as head of federal government relations in 1980, and was named vice president of state, federal, and international government relations in 1987.
Joining Tenneco, Inc., in 1992, as senior vice president for government relations, he was named executive vice president in 1997, with responsibility for investor relations, government relations, communications, environment, health and safety, security, and risk management. He was also a member of the committee that managed the transformation of Tenneco from an ailing conglomerate into seven focused, strong manufacturing companies.
He still sees a connection between Union and where he is today: “The turbulent national political environment got me involved with public policy when I was a student at Union. Thirty years later that passion for issues and debate still drives me, and I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to exercise it every day.”
Castellani has served as vice chair of the Connecticut Governor's Prevention Task Force, as a member of the board of directors of Keep America Beautiful, and as a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. He was also president of the Business Government Relations Council and chair of the Fairfax County (Va.) Redevelopment and Housing Authority. He is married to the former Therese Ann Mulroy; they have two sons.