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Image provided by: SUNY Polytechnic Institute
The Factory Times - May l, 3.991 Instructional Resource Center A Guide for the Truly^ Hip B y P a t r i c k L a v a ra It's been more than ten years since I graduated from high school, and my how things have changed. I dimly recall my high school having something that most high schools called the audio-visual or (A-V) dept., although my really trendy high school called it something really trendy like— \The Media Center.\ It was the place where all the movie and over-head projectors lived when they weren't playing a pivotal role in our respective educations. The A-V room was also a novel way for a variety of borderline nerds (who were generally the people who sat at my lunch table) to get out of homeroom. The A-V room was the province of the A- V room-guy. He was a non-teaching faculty member (usually named Ray) with an amply stocked pocket- protector and a crew- cut. He looked like an extra from \Dragnet and he could diagnose and replace burned-out projector bulbs or find focus or tracking knobs with an eerie, mystical kind of skill that most mortal teaching faculty looked upon with awe— and maybe just a touch of veiled jealousy. We all admired Ray, for we knew in our hearts that Ray, albeit a faculty member, had pledged to use his great powers only for good. The modern incarnation of the erstwhile A-V dept, (minus Ray) here at the college of technology is the Instructional Resource Center. It's located in the basement of Kunsela hall (go down stairs— take a right before you get to the candy machines), and as I said earlier: my,, how things have changed. I was given a tour of the center by the IRC director, Dan Schabert (beard; no crew-cut). Dan acknowledged the changes that have taken place over the years since High School A-V, and added: \We're certainly not solely A-V cart pushers. We still push equipment into the classroom— and that's a very important component of what we do— but we certainly have a lot more to offer.\ What follows is a brief description of what the center does have to offer, as well as a modest plea to our campus community to take better advantage of the resources we all have available to us. Once you hear about the range of equipment and services available, you'll wish you'd heard earlier. Far and away the biggest, most impressive advance of the IRC over the A-V days of old is the professional production quality TV studio— complete with satellite up- and downlink capability. The Studio on campus also has post production (editing) capability— enabling us to produce a program from start to finish \in-house.\ Our studio engineer, Steve Perta, is a graduate of our own Electrical Tech program— and worked for a local TV station before being impressed into service here. The Studio has produced professional quality commercials (advertising SUNY Tech's various programs) which currently run on loca] stations. Using our satellite capability, the school can produce teleconferences for the private sector (on a fee basis), inter active classroom lectures to be seen at other campuses, or even lend out our services to pro fessional TV crews to beam stories back to their own network. This was in fact done last fall, when a CBS network news team covered Barbara Bush's visit*to Griffiss AFB. Our satellite service once provided an international satellite link with London, England, for a teleconference on Insurance. Locally, our studio produces a weekly program called \Community Forum.\ which can be seen on Harron cable ch. 32, Monday nights at 7:00 PM. In mid-April I visited the studio when a SUNY-wide teleconference on multiculturalism was being broadcast. All 64 SUNY campuses were able to view the discussion, which was taking place in Kunsela hall. People from other campuses around the state were able to call in and interact with the guest speakers we had on the panel. The IRC also manages the information you see on teleprompters in Kunsela hall, and will be providing cable TV service to the residence halls (via our own satellites), independent of Utica's Harron cable co. Most people would probably be intimidated by the level of technology involved, but the IRC staff is on hand to ease the pain. One of the first television lectures produced by the school was conducted by a Special Education professor, who had never seen the business end of a TV studio. Within a very short time she was using the technology at hand to the fullest, and conducting a series of televised interactive classroom sessions with 7 other campuses separated by hundreds of miles. Hey students! Check This Out The center also has very impressive graphics capabilities which can be used by students and faculty alike. Here again, the staff provides whatever technical guidance you may require. The service! include slide and overhead transparency production. Students for the price of film and processing, can produce very impressive visual aids for classroom presen tations. Using Harvard Graphics or other software packages, you can custom make visual- aids for presen tations, flyers or brochures, charts, and displays of all kinds to suit your needs. Also available to the student (upon presentation of a valid ID card) are selections from the schools film & video tape library. They have hundreds of titles (including technical fare) ranging from ACID RAIN to YOU'RE NOT ALONE WITH HERPES. As I toured the facility, another use for the studio occurred to me. This campus has a student newspaper, a student broadcast radio station, and a fully equipped and functional TV studio. A student run Television station seems a logical next step. Dan informed me that the idea of course in television production has been discussed, but as yet has not been made a continued on pg# x
