Technology division is reinvented

A new division is creating ways for Skyline students to use technology on campus.

The division, Academic Support and Learning Technologies, plans to move the drop in lab that was once housed in Building 2 into the library.

The newly created division’s dean, Jonathan Paver, is now coordinating the transition of the Center for Advanced Learning and Technology (CALT) and its differences from the new division.

“The CALT is morphing,” Paver said. “All of the work that’s done in Building 2 is done. It’s now a multimedia lab with Mac computers. The 16 computers that were there are being moved to the library.”

The currently open labs for classes are being organized by Alana Utsami, the program services coordinator in the Science/ Math/ Technology (SMT) division.

“There’s not enough space in the existing labs for the demand,” Utsami said.

SMT division dean Raymond Hernandez was previously overseeing the drop in labs and is part of the evolution to its own division.

“The need for technology and how students use it has changed,” Hernandez said. “We’re thinking about our library and our learning center and there has been this concept that many colleges have incorporated called the library of the future, the learning commons. A student or faculty and staff would go in there and it becomes a whole resource of technology.”

Currently there is the option to check out an iPad while in the library and in the future there may be the possibility of renting Chrome books and calculators from the bookstore.

“We’re constantly looking at ways to add access of technology to the library,” Paver said. “We’re in the beginning stages of where we want to go to make the experience seamless for students.”