While her colleague, Michael
Witbeck, likes to trace his history through his cars, Deborah has
cities and--more importantly--computers to mark the passage of time.
(Most of the images in this document are reconstructions from memory
and thus only approximations.)
Let's skip quickly past growing up in Columbus, Ohio. A nice place
to be from.
At Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Deborah discovered
a) just how cold and long winter can be in Kingston,
b) what a quality education was, and c) mainframe computers and punch
cards. Her need for income led to punching the cards that at that
time were the main way of inputting data into computers, all of which
were very large affairs taking a room to themselves.
The next step was learning SPSS to write that code (and punch it onto
cards) in order to make the royal wage of $5 per hour. These were the
days of submitting a stack of cards, waiting for two hours for the
error messages -- one misplaced comma could stop the whole thing --
re-punching the errant card and re-submitting the stack to see what
other errors might crop up. It was a wonderful thing when it worked
and when the paycheck came in.
Backpacking to Europe, the Middle East, and India occupied time
during a long break in attending classes. With Bachelor's degree in
hand, Deborah went for an extended stay in Colombia and her first
English language teaching experience.
Upon returning from Latin America and realizing the dimness of the
Oregon job market, Deborah followed in the footsteps of many of her
contemporaries and went to graduate school in Eugene, Oregon at the
University of Oregon.
(See an Oregon
map.) Despite the birth of her son, who didn't take a nap for his
first two years, she acquired an M.A. in Linguistics. Her first paid
ESL teaching job was at Lane Community College, where the students
were as wonderful as the pay was terrible.
A move to Ashland, Oregon meant a job change to Rogue Community
College's Ashland Adult Learning Center. The pay was marginally
better and the weather a bit nicer.
In 1979 Deborah moved to Salem, Oregon--the state capital--and
jobs initally at Chemeketa Community College in Salem and the English
Language Institute at Oregon State University in Corvallis. The ELI
job proved much more beneficial, with medical and dental coverage
provided for the first time in her working life. She shifted to
working only at the ELI in 1980, and hasn't looked back since.
The Altos computer came into Deborah's life in 1983. It
was a multi-user desktop machine initially with 5MB of hard drive
space, upgraded to a phenomenal 15MB. All of the administrative
record-keeping programs of the ELI (Wordstar 1.0, dBase II, and
SuperCalc) ran in less than 64K of memory.
The ELI made its first foray into computing by allowing
Deborah to purchase whatever she could get for $2000. This turned out
to be a mini-lab of six Commodore Vic 20's with black and white TV
monitors, dear little machines that had to be stored in the locked
bathroom between classes. Deborah taught "Introduction to Programming
in BASIC" as her first CALL course. She did various presentations
extolling the virtues of teaching programming languages as a sneaky
way of introducing Western logical thought and rhetorical
patterns.
Having "Alt" around the office and the desire to write
administrative applications at home encouraged Deborah to invest in
her own computer, a Kaypro. It was a "portable" 26 pounds and served
her well. Deborah moved to Springfield in 1984, Kaypro in hand.
The ELI decided that the computers were popular enough to invest in
better machines. We put together a lab of Apple IIe's with OSU's
School of Education, and were off and running. We continued the
computer class, shifting it to teaching AppleWorks applications, and
added a word-processing option in writing classes.
The ELI got a contract to run the Yemen-America Language Institute
in Sana'a, Yemen in 1985. 
Deborah arrived and got busy setting
up the administrative Macintoshes, chosen because their graphic
interface would be easier for non-native speakers than DOS's
linguistic demands. Unstable power was a major problem, with voltage
swinging from 160V-250V in a matter of seconds (the official voltage
was 220). After burning a couple of computers, five Tripp-Lite
UPS/surge protectors, and much other equipment, YALI set up its home
remedy of running the computers off truck batteries hooked to
inverters. This solution and a Sola surge protector did the
trick.
The instructional lab consisted of Apple IIe's with Grammar Mastery,
AppleWorks, and several shareware simulations and other programs.
Students were convinced that computers were the way of the future and
pressed constantly for programming classes. They were willing to
settle for word-processing, however. The Apples, along with their
Sola surge protector, did a stellar job of surviving the local power
problems. They were still alive and well when the ELI decided not to
reapply for the YALI contract in 1990. They may be there still...
Deborah's Kaypro also survived the local power problems and was left
in Yemen as a legacy.
Deborah returned from Yemen in 1988 to find the Altos being
replaced by Macintoshes in the front office, and FoxBase+/Mac, Word,
and Excel replacing dBase II, WordStar, and SuperCalc. It was time
for major rewrites of administrative record-keeping software. The
Apple IIe's also gave way to Macintosh Pluses and enriched
possibilities in our new Learning Center. Computer-enhanced courses
expanded to include intermediate grammar, most of which was taught
with Gapmaster, Matchmaster, and Storyboard in order to offer
paragraph-level work.
Springfield was much the same. Deborah bought a Macintosh
SE and took on associate editorship of CALL Digest, the
predecessor of
CAELL
Journal from
ISTE,
and began co-editing TESOL's annual Software List. She took a
year of leave in 1989/90 to work full-time on doctoral coursework in
computers in education. Back at the ELI and the Editor of CAELL
Journal, Deborah became increasingly enmeshed in computer
work--especially as Chair of TESOL's CALL Interest Section in
1991.
Finishing the Ph.D. was followed by beginning work on
Something to Do on Tuesday, a guide to computer-using teachers
that was published by
Athelstan in 1995.
Deborah moved to Eugene, added a Mac IIsi to her Macintosh
collection, and began sharing a house with a diehard DOS person, for
whom the Windows graphical interface was wimpy. Deborah renewed her
acquaintanceship with MS-DOS and learned about Windows, over the
years growing familiar but not patient with the interface.
Deborah finally got stopped using the Mac IIsi at home and
replaced it with
a PowerCenter 180, testing the clone market (which was still
alive when she bought the PowerPC). She became the Technology
Coordinator of the ELI, trading the people-intense demands of
the Coordinator of Instructor position for one that allowed for more
time for communing in cyberspace. She helped put together the
TESOL/CELIA CD-ROM and the Macintosh portion of
CELIA,
the CALL software archive that formed the backbone of the CD. She
worked on TESOL '98's Technology Connects Interest Section sessions. Her
current projects include the annually-updated Salzburg
Seminars in Austria, one on using the Internet for language
teaching and the other on Resources for American Culture studies (see
a
picture
of the castle she slept in) and a couple of
Online Seminars for EFL teachers
in Eastern Europe. She became convinced that it's just as much work
to organize an online seminar as one where you're physically present
after sending out some 150+ email messages over the course of three
weeks.
Lack of space in the home office became an issue with two complete computers, so Deborah decided to work with a switchbox that would allow her to have two CPUs on one monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It works, though having 15 cables rather than 6 is a mess. She has upgraded from her previous laptop (a ThinkPad 390X bought on eBay) to a Lenovo Tablet PC that is both nifty and considerably lighter to carry in a backpack (with significant improvements in shoulder and back health, too). Someday she may get a cool IBook...
With cutbacks in enrollment and revenue at the ELI as a result of the Asian economic crisis, Deborah became the ELI Director in 1999. She is more involved than ever with budgeting, personnel, and recruiting, as well as teaching. She is part of the ELI's teacher preparation projects, a series of workshops and activities for elementary and middle school teachers who work with ESL children. On the technology side, she still works on the ELI's Technology Seminars, a series of workshops in July, and continues to indulge her penchant for travel while doing ELI work with the Traveling Tech Seminars. Recent activities have been in Mexico, Qatar and Oman, France, Turkey - Sabanci University and Koc University, Tunisia, Egypt, Thailand, Cyprus, and Taiwan. She has continued with the CALL Interest Section Software List, and maintains an online version. Her Tech Tip of the Month has become more of an archive than a monthly addition to the website due to administrative demands.
A highlight was her son Jesse's marriage to Amy Ma in 2002. (See a photo.) They have a house
in Portland, where Jesse works with Winterbrook Planning and Amy,
with YGH Architects. It's close enough to encourage frequent trips up
and down the Willamette valley. The newest addition to the family is Jesse and Amy's golden lab, also known as my "grandpuppy." (See Atlas's request for this addition to the website.) Here are a few pictures of my favorite dog, too.
For more information (as if this wasn't enough!), you can email me.
