Unplugged and Loving It
 Just 10 years ago, technology in the classroom was limited to watching videos on bulky monitors and viewing slides from a loud and sometimes temperamental slide projector. Today, Barnard students can have a multimedia experience in classrooms that rival any movie theater in terms of audio and visual quality, and can write e-mails from locations throughout campus using their laptop computers.
About 70 percent of all classrooms at the College have in-room media equipment, according to Carol Falcione, dean of information services. While some classrooms have basic audio and video capacity using a monitor, others have equipment such as a computer, ceiling-mounted digital projection system, wall-mounted video cameras and speakers, video/data projectors, and DVD/CD players. The most equipped classrooms are Julius S. Held Lecture Hall in 304 Barnard Hall, Krueger Lecture Hall in 405 Milbank Hall, Lehman Auditorium in 202 Altschul Hall, and the Sloate Media Center in the Barnard Library in Lehman Hall.
Such classrooms have allowed instructors to develop a more integrated approach to their teaching. Alan Segal, the Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, often uses overhead projectors and video equipment that’s part of the classroom to easily incorporate a wide range of audio-visual material into his lectures. “Technology is revolutionizing the way students are learning,” he says.
Tamara Montacute ’05, an environmental science major from Seattle, Wash., agrees. Technology “allows the pages of the book and the sometimes boring lectures to move into the context of the real world,” she says, particularly when students can use videos and programs such as PowerPoint to make presentations.
The Sloate Media Center, on the third floor of the library, is the heart of cutting-edge multimedia technology on campus. The center—which opened in 2002 and was funded by a generous donation from Laura J. Sloate ’66—features a classroom with digital video cameras, a ceiling-mounted projection system and microphones, and a podium with a computer, DVD, VHS, and touch-screen controls.
In an adjoining control room, media services staff can oversee these systems and assist students, faculty, and staff with video and audio projects. For example, media services staff recently recorded and edited interviews for “The Book Show,” a radio program hosted by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, a professor in the English department and director of the Africa and African diaspora studies program.
Students in Barnard’s film production class meet in the classroom/studio area and can use special-purpose computers available only to them and other Barnard students doing class-related audio/video editing and production projects, Falcione says. There are also two special-purpose computers—connected to a high-end color printer and scanner—for visual arts students.
Outside the classroom, Barnard has created 10 spots on campus with wireless Internet capability over the past four years. As a result, anyone using a laptop computer can connect to the Internet using a wireless card that picks up the signal from various transmitters on campus. This technology—accessible in places including the Arthur Ross Courtyard in the residential Quad, Lehman Lawn, McIntosh Student Center, and parts of the library—gives students and faculty greater flexibility in where they can do their work. “I’ve been on the lawn with my computer in the springtime,” says Nicole Bufanio ’06, a women’s studies major from Union, N.J.
Given the considerable interest in wireless technology, the College is “exploring the possibility of extending wireless coverage on campus,” says Thomas Sobczak Jr., director of management information and network services.
In fact, Barnard’s wireless coverage was extensive enough to be ranked No. 75 on Intel Corp.’s second annual list of the top 100 “unwired” colleges and universities in the United States.
Now that’s something to e-mail home about.
—Shelley Gazes ’05
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