ALBERT LEA – More than 260 area high school students got a taste of technology at Riverland Community College’s TechNet 2000 event this week.

Friday, November 17, 2000

ALBERT LEA – More than 260 area high school students got a taste of technology at Riverland Community College’s TechNet 2000 event this week.

The goal of the event was to expose students to a wide range of cutting-edge technology, including auto diagnostics, Web page design and digital video editing.

"It is also secondarily a way for Riverland to introduce students to the college environment," coordinator Eric Shoars, radio broadcasting instructor on Riverland’s Austin campus, said.

Dover-Eyota sophomore Jamie Yost attended the Wednesday event with other students in her computer class. Considering a career in software engineering, Yost said she learned about programs in her photo editing session at TechNet.

"I thought it was pretty cool," Yost said. Instructors from Riverland demonstrated different technologies and their uses in Wednesday’s four sessions. They were joined by employees of Teach Net, a company that teaches technology to college faculty. Some sections were demonstrations, but many allowed students to try out programs for themselves, Shoars said.

"It’s not a passive exercise," he said. "I think we’re doing a far greater service to the students by making it relevant to them personally."

TechNet organizers tried to make the sessions accessible to students, using software that is now or will soon be commercially available and giving them advice about careers in technology.

In his session on creating Shockwave content for the Web using macromedia, Teach Net Web manager Tim Hofmeister suggested prerequisite knowledge high school students can be acquiring now to prepare themselves for future study in technology.

"I go through some sample Web sites and show them some examples of work people are doing today," Hofmeister said. "I might cover some of the technical aspects of the programs themselves."

Other programs covered in the sessions included Cool Edit Pro, a digital wave form audio editing tool; DreamWeaver Web design software; digital image editing using Adobe Premier; and Dragon Speaker voice recognition software.

The biggest problem with TechNet is physical capacity, Shoars said. Even though they did not advertise, the event was full only two weeks after registration opened – a month before the event was scheduled. The way it is currently set up, the event does not have much room to grow.

"We’re using practically every student computer that’s available on this campus," Shoars said.