Avi Hyman

Ph.D. (OISE/UT)
Instructor

Research Interests:

My specific teaching areas are organizational administration and policy analysis for educational technology. At the graduate level, I am currently teaching courses on the administration of technology in K-12 and higher education settings. In the initial teacher education program, I teach a course on classroom technologies for teachers. I have also taught a course on the history of educational technology, and in the Sociology program at OISE/UT (cultural issues in cyberspace) and participated in Practicum supervision in the ITE program. My research activities focus on administrative policies and educational practices as well. Currently, I am involved in a number of research projects. In one project we are designing and testing school-parent communications systems. In another we are assessing instructor practices as related to the infusion of technology into the curriculum of initial teacher education programs. Related to this, I am in the processing of comparing ministry guidelines for technology infusion with the curriculum found in the faculties of education and in qualifying teacher tests. I am also in the process of interviewing young "hackers" to see how their practices actually compare to the mythology found in the cyber-anarchy literature. Administratively, as the coordinator of academic computing in the Education Commons, I manage a diverse team of educators and technical specialists who work with OISE/UT's instructors, researchers, and students on realizing their academic goals through technology, where appropriate. Our team provides support to research initiatives and classroom teaching, including teaching online; I have personal experience with WebCT, BlackBoard, WebKF, FirstClass, and I have run several large listserv communities. In addition to my current role, I have experience in all aspects of computing services, including support to student computing lab environments and the deployment of educational software.