Category: Clark College

I’m Bringing IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson to the Classroom

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I am very happy to announce that students enrolled in my “Intro to Programming and Problem Solving” class at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington will be using IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson this week in class. Students will be building a language translation program and a tone analyzer program using the Python programming language.

Many thanks to IBM for their “Academic Initiative” program which makes it easy for educators to get access to IBM Bluemix for a limited time.

Students in my other programming language course will also soon be using Bluemix and Watson.

Stay tuned.

Say What? IBM and Education

Last night the Dean of my divison at the college sent an email that she received from the Washington State, Center of Excellence. In the email were many things, but one of those things caught my attention. Here it is:

Screenshot 2016-02-10 08.28.48

The IBM BlueMix team offers IT instructors to enroll in a “no-charge” program called “IBM Academic Initiative for Cloud/BlueMix“. I’m going to see where this takes me. Stay tuned for details.

We Made it Onto the “Best List”

SEATTLE — Nine Washington community colleges, including Clark College in Vancouver, are on list of the 150 best in the nation.

The Aspen College Excellence Program picks its top 150 by doing a data review. It picks the schools that show the most student success, in term of persistence, completion and transfer.

The program wants to see consistent improvement over time, as well as equity in outcomes for students of all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

This web development insructor is very proud of Clark’s students, administration, staff and faculty.

More >

Year 4

Today marks the beginning of my fourth year as a college instructor at Clark College. I’m amazed at how quickly the time flies by. Here are a few things that I have learned about teaching at a community college that I thought I would share with you:

  • Seeing students graduate from your program and getting jobs is awesome.
  • Office hours are a thing of the past. Virtual office hours are seven days a week.
  • 10-30% of your students truly want to learn and the others simply go through the “motions” of school.
  • Teach to the “middle” of the class.
  • Teaching people who range in age from 13 to 75 is extremely rewarding and challenging; especially when they are all in the same class.
  • Excuses are a constant.
  • Classroom management is not as easy as people think it is.
  • Developing the right mix of assignments, testing, labs and other assessments takes time to develop and constantly needs tweeking.
  • I love what I am doing.
  • I’m always learning new things.

I highly encourage anyone who is thinking about teaching at a college or university to do it. Your first couple of semesters will be rough but, once you realize the impact you make on students lives,  you will embrace and love doing it.

I’m always available if you want to talk about becoming a college instructor or want to learn more about the web development program at Clark College.

I’m Very Proud

Recent Clark College Web Development graduate Troy Uyan was part of a five person team that designed and developed the new Clark County website.

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Troy graduated with a degree in web development and was a student in my HTML Fundamentals, Intro to Programming, JavaScript, PHP/SQL 1 and PHP/SQL 2 classes. Troy initially served as an intern at the county and then was offered a full-time position. Troy was in the web deveopment program for two years.

Troy’s role in the project was that of front end developer and co-designer of the site. Troy also produced all of the training videos and other resources.

I’m super proud of Troy and what he has accomplished.

You can check out the new Clark County site here.

Why Feedback Matters

It’s now been a little over a week since the Fall Quarter ended at Clark College and it’s time to review anonymous feedback students left on the popular RateMyProfessors.com site.

Now, this post may see a bit “ASW-ish”, but when you truly enjoy what you are doing and you are making an impact on peoples lives, why not share it? 

Here are some the reviews left in the past 30 days:

CTEC 121 – Intro to Programming and Problem Solving

Awesome teacher and a great class, I really learned a lot. I never felt like I couldn’t ask questions, and he joked with the class a lot to make it a really comfortable environment to learn in. There is a lot of homework, but it was fun to do, and he was always available to answer questions. An all around fantastic class.

CTEC 165 – Business Web Practices

Each week Bruce Elgort brought in speakers to conduct presentations. He went all out to find interesting people that could speak on a variety of subjects related to “Business Web Practices”. I am usually fighting off sleep when forced to endure presentations, but these were often fun and always very interesting to listen to.

CTEC 228 – API and Advanced Integration

Bruce Elgort is very organized, easy to understand, available for help,& definitely cares about his students. He goes the extra mile to provide guidance and help when you need it.

CTEC 121 – Intro to Programming and Problem Solving

Bruce Elgort is very organized, easy to understand, available for help,& definitely cares about his students. He goes the extra mile to provide guidance and help when you need it.

CTEC 228 – API and Advanced Integration

Bruce is an amazing instructor, He makes himself available 27/7 for help, His classes are hard, but its programming, and programming is hard. Bruce make class fun and he teaches useful techniques that can be applied to many programming languages.

CTEC 121 – Intro to Programming and Problem Solving

Bruce is probably one of the best professors I’ve ever had. He’s extremely knowledgeable in his field and he is always excited to teach you more, if you just ask about it. He has a great talent for teaching to the average student, but also giving unique challenges to the student who is ready for something a bit more complicated.

CTEC 121 – Intro to Programming and Problem Solving

A very enjoyable professor. I had him and he made everything interesting in his own way. Quizzes and homework almost every week, but if you go to class and do some reading it will be a breeze. If you need help is almost always online and ready to help you with whatever roadblocks you run into. I’m definitely looking forward to taking him again.

CTEC 121 – Intro to Programming and Problem Solving

Bruce extremely helpful! He is very smart and knows the subject in and out! He’s always available for help! He is very funny and makes class very enjoyable!

Here are all of the reviews left on RateMyProfessors.com.

Three Years as a College Professor

This month I completed my third year as a professor at Clark College, located in Vancouver, Washington. Here are the courses I have taught:

  • HTML Fundamentals (CTEC 122)
  • JavaScript (CTEC 126)
  • Intro to Programming and Problem Solving with Python (CTEC 121)
  • PHP with SQL 1 (CTEC 127)
  • PHP with SQL 2 (CTEC 227)
  • Business Web Practices (CTEC 165)
  • API & Advanced Integration (CTEC 228)

In that time I have had the pleasure of working with 700+ students, received the 2013 Exceptional Faculty Award and have made many new friends and colleagues. I am also participating in several college councils and industry advisory boards. Add to the list three “30 Clicks” presentations at the Cannell Library.

My “encore career” continues to bring much joy and happines to my life.

And that’s a wrap…

I would like to thank the following people for volunteering to speak to my Business Web Practices class at Clark College during the Fall 2015 quarter:

Week 1 – Craig Ebersol of Clark College / Heidi Johnson Bixby of Johnson Bixby and Associates
Week 2 – Tocarra Stark, Communications and Marketing of Clark College
Week 3 – Troy Uyan of Clark County
Week 4 – Derek Jesser and Aine McCarthy of Gravitate Design
Week 5 – Micah Godbolt of Phase2
Week 6 – Morgan McColum and Don Mills of Twilight Pizza and Scott Carden, Marblelife
Week 7 – Jane Croft of Anthem Medical
Week 8 – Dave Barcos of The Startup Brand
Week 9 – Aaron Hockley, Aaron Hockley Photography

All of you delivered invaluable information and experiences that each and every student couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

On behalf of my students, myself and Clark College – Thank You!

Here is a description of the course from the course catalog:

Business Web Practices surveys business standards and professional best practices for professions associated with web content creation, web design, and web development. Topics include distinctions between freelance, contracted and salaried work environments, web production practices in content strategy, project management, workflow and version control, current practices in marketing, web analytics and search engine optimization, and legal and ethical issues.

During Week 11 of the quarter students will be delivering “Ignite” style final presentations. I’m super stoked to see my students presenting in this new and upcoming presentation style.

Winter 2016 Registration Now Open at Clark College

Registration for the Winter 2016 quarter at Clark College is now open. If you are a current student I highly encourage you to register for your classes sooner rather than later.

If you are new ew to Clark and are thinking about taking some classes this Winter, I suggest that you visit the college and meet with an adviser.

Not sure what courses are available? Start here.

Here’s what I am teaching this winter at Clark College

For the winter quarter I will be teaching the following courses at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington:

  1. CTEC 121: Intro to Programming and Problem Solving (Python) – 5 credits
  2. CTEC 122: HTML Fundamentals (HTML/HTML5/CSS) – 4 credits
  3. CTEC 127: PHP/MySQL 1 – 5 credits

If you are interested in taking any of these classes please let me know.