It was the Summer that Everything Change : Fingers Ogilve...
Sam Shiffman has a long history of working in both education and the new media field.
Sam began his New Media career the old fashioned way, as a lowly production assistant for various film shoots around New York.
Reading an article in the New York Times about a new computer system that allowed folks to duplicate the entire contents of a TV studio in one box ( Newtek's Video Toaster), he vowed to track down a company that had one of these miracle machines and liberate himself from the tyranny of hostile hierarchal film crews.
Sam was able to find a local wedding videography company that gave him unlimited access to their equipment in exchange for emptying trash, cleaning bathrooms and editing hundreds of hours of wedding video footage.
It was at this point in his life that he came to the realization that editing wedding videos was monotonous and that running around New York City parking directors cars and getting coffee for Whitney Huston was not going to be much of a career
He enrolled in the prestigious Masters Program in New Media at the New School for Social Research.
Freshly Minted with a new Masters Degree, a new Macintosh and a provisional teaching certificate, Sam set about bringing the theoretical research that was the cornerstone of his New School education to the public school systems in New Jersey.
It was not a good match.
Fortunately, Mr. Shiffman has an uncanny ability to land on his feet. Sam was tapped to head project management for the newly createdNew Jersey Center for Multimedia research (NJCMR).
It was here that he led the charge for the newly burgeoning technology of Streaming Video. Notable accomplishments were:
-Creating a partnership with New Jersey Public television that brought the citizens of New Jersey live internet delivery of all NJNproductions.
- Developing free workshops for New Jersey public school teachers where they could get FREE hands-on training with state of the art technology.
-Delivering Multimedia Boot camps thought the state for the Department of Higher Ed.
After funding for the center ran out, Mr. Shiffman was able to catch the last wave of the Dot Com boom.
Landing at a company that claimed to do Interactive video streaming, it was here that he was able to witness first hand the heady ways of company sponsored foosball tournaments, AEON chairs, stock options and bring your pet to work luncheons. It was experience that he will never forget.
It was the imminent arrival of his first child which brought about his conversion back to more educational pursuits.
As a digital media specialist for Seton Hall University (America's 13th most wired college) he was responsible for heading up their Streaming initiatives.
Notable projects included:
-Live Webcast of visit from President Khathami of Iran.
-International Webcast of Seton Hall University Graduation from the Meadowlands Arena.
- Live Streams of Faculty Workshops
He is very happy and lives with his lovely wife and some other related folks on a tree lined street in Central New Jersey.
I have spent the last several years working at helping fellow educators get a leg up on technology. I have done this by presenting at numerous educational conferences such as Educause and NECC and as a Classroom Teacher and Educational Technologist.
When I was working for NJIT I helped to establish partnerships with The Liberty Science Center, The Newark Museum, New Jersey Public Television and Rutgers Newark. Together we developed several different educational programs. Of the more notable ones, a series of free workshops offered to K-12 Teachers called, "Multimedia Boot camp for Teachers" and "Engineering Career Days" come to mind.
I arranged for the participating institutions to supply staff and expertise and NJIT offered the hardware and the space. Over the course of two years we were able to do training and projects with hundreds of students and teachers. This included everything from direct hands on training with the latest multimedia software, to sponsoring career days where students are introduced to the exciting possibilities that are available in science and engineering fields.
Over the past several years I have also been heavily involved in staff computer training, developing a technology curriculum and budgeting technology needs. I know both the limitations and promise of current technology and can handle multiple projects at once. I believe these qualities combined with over ten years of direct classroom experience in K-12 would allow me to successfully take students to the next level.