User:Gary Anderson
Gary Anderson is a native of Seattle, a graduate of the University of Washington with degrees in Math, Business Economics, and certification in history education. He has a Master's degree in Teaching from Seattle University. Before entering teaching in 1996, he was the General Manager of the largest computer store in the Pacific Northwest which sold a majority of Apple II and Macintosh computers to schools, businesses and individuals around the I-5 corridor. He was also president of a software company that specialized in network communications.
Teaching is the family business for Gary. Both of his parents are retired teachers, and his brother is the principal of a middle school and his sister is an elementary school teacher.
His research interest is in the technology of instruction, and in particular the effects on student achievement when they receive rapid feedback on their performance. He has designed a number of software projects in advancement of this effort. He is currently working on a Moodle activity based on the theory of Spaced Repetition and another activity that customizes Wikimedia software for use in secondary school education.
Gary is the head of the Math Department at Seattle Academy and wonderful private, college prep, independent school that among many other things is in the 12th year of a universal laptop program for it's upper school. He teaches Advance Algebra, Second Year Calculus, and elective trimesters in Statistics, Math Modeling and Software Development. These math electives are the most popular electives in the school.
For the past 4 years, Gary has been known as the Moodle Master and has customized the software to make it especially usable in the high school environment (see Seattle_Academy). He is now turning over this day-to-day responsibility to has technology department and Curriculum Technology Coordinator Vicki Butler so the he can focus on being more involved in the larger technology community, contributing what he has learned from overseeing the school's Moodle project and other educational technology initiatives.
I will use subpages of my talk area to make more detailed observations and analysis of current Moodle issues that may not work well in the tracker, the forums, or other areas of Moodle's documentation.
