Tim Jepson

Mission Statement

As an educational technologist, my focus is to determine how best to integrate technology tools and strategies into curriculum to enhance pedagogy and/or create entirely new learning environments. I am accomplished at creating and developing educational media for students and educators. Using the ADDIE model, I can leverage technology to analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate program instruction to ensure continuous improvement. I believe students achieve their greatest potential when curriculum is student-focused, research-based, technology-rich, and morally informed. To help guide my technology integration design and implementation, I look to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) for guidance. Technology has reshaped our society and our education systems must adapt so that learning is relevant to the needs of the modern student. I am determined to share my knowledge of technology with learners and educators alike to ensure learning is authentic, engaging, fun, and ultimately valuable to the learner.

Learn more about Tim on the About Page.

About

Tim Jepson is an educational technologist based in San Diego and a graduate of the Boise State Master of Educational Technology program. Originally from Dunedin, New Zealand, Tim moved to California with his wife Lauren in 2008 and became a US citizen in 2018. When he is not working or volunteering as an instructor with the Rosa Parks Elementary School Robotics Club, Tim enjoys creative pursuits like photography, wood carving, and drawing. He spends the rest of his spare time with family, friends, and his two Boston terriers (Molly and Boss). Although Tim enjoys learning about new emerging technologies and trends, he is careful to find a balance in his work between technology and nature. The School in the Park Program
Tim has worked in Balboa Park as an educational technologist, for the School in the Park program, since 2011. School in the Park (SITP), is a program which brings students from San Diego’s inner city to Balboa Park. At the park, students engage in authentic learning activities and take advantage of the galleries, habitats, and unique resources in the various museums and cultural institutions, including the Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Natural History Museum, and the San Diego Zoo among others. The program is not a field trip. Rather, it is a continuation of the school day for the students and therefore it is held to the same academic standards as any school. The program has been developing innovative learning experiences and curricula, free to the public to to use and adapt, since 1998. Learn more about SITP at www.schoolinthepark.net
As the Technology Facilitator for SITP, Tim’s responsibilities grew over time to include overseeing the technology implementation and development within the program, staff training, tech-focused professional development (PD), tech research & purchase recommendations, troubleshooting daily technology issues, and the development of educational multimedia and scaffolding materials for instruction. Learn more about Tim’s EdTech projects on the Experience Page of this website.
Rosa Parks Robotics Club
Through his connection with Rosa Parks Elementary School staff, Tim began volunteering as an instructor in the Junior Robotics Club. Students in the club learn to program using C, the same coding language used by computer scientists, and build robots for competition in the local BotBall meetups. As an instructor, Tim helps students troubleshoot the issues they encounter, develops scaffolding materials and training tutorials, and has begun developing a club model to help facilitate the creation of more robotics clubs in the Hoover Cluster schools. Graphic Design & Illustration
Before joining the staff at SITP, Tim worked as a graphic designer and web developer for several San Diego museums. The skills he learned as a graphic designer inform his creative abilities to produce educational media and use industry tools, like the Adobe Creative Suite and Final Cut Pro X. Below are some examples of design and illustration projects Tim created. Bone & Wood Carving
As mentioned earlier, Tim has several creative hobbies, including photography, bone & wood carving, painting, and drawing. He learned the traditional art of bone carving while in high school and has maintained the hobby developing his skills ever since. Tim has sold bone carvings to patrons all over the world, including France, Germany, Canada, the USA, and New Zealand. He has recently become interested in developing his wood carving skills with intentions of creating larger scale sculptures. Find examples of Tim’s bone/wood carving work at www.studiotapu.com. Digital Photography
As an amateur photographer, Tim is drawn to photographing people, nature, and he has a particular fascination for old broken-down rusty vehicles. Driven to document these relics as the intersection of technology and nature, Tim never misses an opportunity to hunt for decaying vehicles during his travels to new cities and countries. Below are some examples of Tim’s photography. Learn more about educational technology projects, Tim has developed, on the Experience Page.

Experience

Tim spent several years getting a crash-course in educational technology, museum education, and traditional classroom education at School in the Park. Learn more about SITP on the ​About page​. Collaborating with a diverse spectrum of educators, technologists, administrators, teaching artists, fine artists, scientists, historians, and even zoo-keepers, Tim found his place developing technology-rich projects with the program. Below are several case studies of edtech projects Tim developed himself as well as projects he collaborated on with program stakeholders.

3rd grade History Center - Mapping GPS/Google Earth Project
3rd graders visiting the San Diego History Center studied cartography and the history of Balboa Park. The students navigated their way around Balboa Park, using wifi-enabled Android phones, and the GPS functions in the MyTracks app. Using the phones and a compass, the students located historic landmarks, like statues, sculptures, and historic buildings around the park. Once the groups of students found a landmark, they were able to take photographs using the phones, which were automatically embedded in the tracks they were creating. Back in the classroom, the students reviewed the data they had accumulated, such as how many steps they had taken compared to other days, and got to see the aerial view of their journeys, using Google Earth on a large Promethean ActivWall. Also using Google Earth, students were able to see embedded layers of historic photographs to show how Balboa Park has changed over time and they were able to see locations, that they could not visit in person, like the Panama Canal. As a culminating activity, the students used Google Sites to create online guidebooks featuring their own information and photos. The online Guide Books were shared with their families and classmates to encourage more people to visit the Park. The technology integrated into this class helped to engage the students and enabled them to perform tasks that they would otherwise have not been able to. The students took charge of the technology and learned to use several software tools, like MyTracks, Google Earth, and Google Sites. 4th grade Zoo - Augmented Reality (FreshAir app)
4th grade students visiting the Zoo with SITP, visited animal habitats in person and used 1:1 Android phones to play an educational video game about the animals they had studied. After answering several questions correctly, students were able to unlock an Augmented Reality model of the animals that allowed them to see the digestive tracts of the animals and how they interact with each other. The app and technology were developed by Kitty Gabriel and a start up called FreshAir from MIT. My role was to facilitate the learning experience and adjust the game through the back-end user interface.

The use of the Androids alone was a great attention grabber but once the students unlocked the AR models they were 100% engaged. Seeing the digestive tracts of the animals in the models allowed for a learning experience that would have previously been impossible.

5th grade Movie Trailers at the Old Globe - iMovie
5th grade students attending the Old Globe Theatre spent two weeks learning about putting on a theatre production to be performed at the Hattox Hall. To help the students understand the stories of the various plays, they used 1:4 iPads and the iMovie app trailer template to create movie trailers to advertise their productions. Students were given the iPads, complete with Rode mics and a steadicam or tripod, and were instructed to use the spaces in Balboa Park for their scenes. The groups of students spent some time storyboarding their trailers then once they had gathered the footage of each other performing clips from the play, they collaborated on the editing to perfect their trailer. The trailers were then sent to parents and family to encourage them to attend the final production and they were played at the beginning of the show as well.
Asking the students to form groups and use the technology tools to produce reasonably high quality videos, enabled students to explore authentic careers and play the role of both film crew and acting troupe. The students developed film editing and production skills that could also be applied to other academic presentations. The engagement factor was so high on this project that strict filming timelines had to be enforced and the students often got so into their roles they rarely noticed the groups of Balboa park visitors that often gathered to watch them. Many of the students that lacked confidence in front of the camera were able to excel behind it. The iMovie Trailers at the Old Globe go down as one of my favorite edtech projects of all time. See some examples below.

6th grade theNAT Fossil Cards - ActivInspire FlipChart and Student Response
6th graders attending the San Diego Natural History Museum (theNAT), used laminated cards, that I had created, to organize and place fossil discoveries on a geologic timeline. After taking high quality photographs of the fossils on exhibit, the museum educators provided me with the factual information to create the cards and color code them by epoch. After visiting the museum and taking their own photos of the exhibits, students used the cards to place them in order on a physical timeline. Later, the students explored a more comprehensive digital timeline on a twin panel Promethean Board. Students added the fossil descriptions to the time for the epoch they had studied and the whole class used Promethean student response ‘clickers’ to get a consensus if the fossils had been placed in the correct order. The students also used the ‘clickers’ for daily quizzes and we found they were much more engaged when they were able to use the phone-like devices than they had been when the quizzes were on paper.

Students went as far as to request more quizzes for the classes. Educators were able to review the data gathered by the student response system during and after the class and make adjustments to the lessons accordingly.

7th grade Old Globe Graphic Design Poster Project - Adobe Spark Post
At the Old Globe, 7th grade students learned about Shakespeare’s play Romeo & Juliet and chose projects based on careers, in the theatre, that interested them. Of the six options, one was a graphic design project in which the students created posters to advertise the play. To kick things off the instructor took the students to look at the posters featured by the Old Globe box office. The instructor used an iPad and the Skitch app to photograph the posters so that they could annotate over the images while describing the four elements of design (contrast, repetition, proximity and alignment).

After following the design process to develop their initial sketches on paper, the students then used Adobe Spark Post to recreate their designs in a digital format. The user-friendly app provided the students with many differing approaches to creating their final poster, including using free stock images, vector graphics, and a variety of fonts. Students were able to make their own decisions and no matter what their approach, be it illustrative, text-based or photographic, they were all able to make posters inspired by their original artwork. Using the app to create digital artwork greatly improved the quality of the artwork and due to improved efficiency, the students were able to spend more time learning about the design process and receiving constructive feedback. See the full overview ​here​.

Training workshops and professional development
Over the years at SITP, I created, developed and implemented several training workshops and professional development resources. I created screencast tutorials that taught educators how to use common educational tools and I used Google Forms to survey and gather data on the educators learning experiences to improve the videos. I was also able to conduct small in person workshops to teach educators to use essential hardware tools like Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) and software tools like Google Earth. Below are some examples of those training videos and slides.

Scaffolding materials and classroom resources.
Just like I created learning media for the educators, I also created and developed learning media for the students to help scaffold their learning experience. Although I was usually available in person to teach the 3rd grade students, at the San Diego History Center, how to create websites from scratch using Google Sites with their own photos and content, I also created a short screencast tutorial about Google Sites as a backup. These kinds of resources were only implemented if the students required additional scaffolding and usually provided enough of an overview that the students could create their own sites. These resources were also shared with the classroom teachers so students could access them to create other academic projects.

Rebranding SITP
To celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the School in the Park program, I worked with a team of stakeholders to design and develop a new version of the classic SITP logo. Having vector based artwork for the logo allowed for the SITP admin to begin a rebranding process, purchasing new staff badges and shirts and having the logo printed on give away tote bags.

Learning Media
Intro Videos: During my time at SITP I have filmed and edited hundreds of videos ranging from student performances to instructional content. A large amount of those videos I developed as introductions to the various 1 week or 2 week long classes. The aim was to ensure students knew where they were going, what they would learn and who would be teaching them. The videos made such a large impact on the students that we ended up creating an intro video for each curriculum (approximately 20). With a budget of zero dollars we had to be very creative and use a lot of low budget effects, including using a green screen and creating animations frame by frame. Not only did the videos help prepare the students for their visits, they also served as good ice breakers for new educators and we found that the parents and teachers also really appreciated seeing them.

Software Tutorials: When new software is introduced into the learning environment, it is sometimes necessary to train students and staff how to use it. This training is often done in person however, frequently software tutorials are required as either a backup to the in-person training or in its place. I used screencast tools, like ScreenFlow 7, to record instructions and add annotations and a voiceover to explain how to use it. I have created software tutorials for a variety of programs and apps, including Google Sites for 3rd grade students, ClassDojo for facilitators, and even Google Drive overviews for museum educators. Using software tutorials can cut down on the need for in-person training and also provide a reference for staff and students to refer back to when help is not available.

Career Connections Videos: As the SITP program is often career focused, students are introduced to careers they may have never heard of before. To help provide background information about these careers, I worked with educators to develop short videos in which a career professional is interviewed, often in their workplace. Working with Sam Perez at the San Diego History Center, I filmed and edited an interview with the San Diego Civic Organist who performs at the Speckels Organ Pavilion every Sunday. Ramirez discussed his non-traditional education and his inspirational approach to learning music. The video was enhanced with annotations and pop-up facts that Ramirez mentioned. When SITP/SDHC students visit the Organ Pavilion in person, the main door is usually closed and they cannot always see the organ or hear it. We play the video for them as a back-up and to provide additional information about the career of a professional musician.

Educator Technology Spotlight: Learning from experience, I realized that educators are mostly influenced by successes of other educators. To help encourage technology integration that was appropriate for the museum classes, I filmed and interviewed various museum educators about technology projects they had attempted. We discussed what they had attempted, what the need was, and finally, how things worked out. The resulting videos were then shared with the other museum educators from the program. In one such video, I interview Lisa Townsend, the Director of Education at the San Diego Zoo, about her decision to purchase several flat screen monitors to display learning media throughout the classroom. Lisa discusses the pros and cons of using the technology and even elaborated on the costs involved. It was important that Lisa speak her own mind about how it all worked out and I did not attempt to influence her opinion. Although Lisa was mostly posiutobe about the purchases and encouraged others to follow suit, I would have shared her interview even if she had not been. Educators found the videos very useful in terms of making purchases of their own.

Staff Technology Integration
SITP admin needed to print many documents with sensitive information to be distributed to the facilitators (teaching assistants) for each week. To help the office move towards a paperless workplace model, I helped to equip the facilitators with iPads that had Google apps loaded onto them. The facilitators were then able to access the information they required at the time they required it all through a shared Google Drive. In addition, the facilitators were able to leverage the iPads as tools for documenting the various classes at the program. The photos they took, of student work and gallery exhibits, were uploaded to Google Photos and shared with a main SITP account. The result is an archive with hundreds of folders that document every class visit. The photo albums are shared with the teachers and educators and often with parents through apps like ClassDojo.

ClassDojo: Because teachers at the school site began using ClassDojo as a class management tool and to share content with parents, I helped to train SITP staff on how to use the software. Working with SITP admin, I created a workshop in which the facilitators learned about the tool and had opportunities to practice using it. Keeping things light-hearted, I created a roster of the staff members as a fictional class and allocated positive and negative points based on their behavior during the meeting. For example, I created a negative point for students who used their phone while they should have been paying attention in class. During the workshop when the facilitators started using their phones, I allocated the negative point which promptly corrected their behavior in a fun way.

Google earth Training: To help the museum educators feel more confident using tools like Google Earth in the classroom, I created and administered a Google Earth training workshop in which the educators were able to learn the basics of the software, the differences between the variations, and which features were most useful for educational purposes.

See more EdTech project examples on the Education Page.

Education

Academic Record
Boise State University, Idaho, USA — Masters in Educational Technology
MARCH 2018

Boise State University, Idaho, USA — Graduate Certificate Technology Integration Specialist
DECEMBER 2017

University of Otago, New Zealand— Bachelor of Arts
Double Major: Art History and Theory, Film and Media Studies
Minor: Religious Studies
JULY 2006

National School of Business Studies, New Zealand — Diploma in Illustration
SEPTEMBER 2003

National College of Design, New Zealand — Diploma in Computer Aided Graphic Design
MARCH 2001

Boise State Projects

Contact

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