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Pioneer Educator
Ted Nellen is a pioneer in technology use in education. In 1993 Ted added a linux server to his classroom and created CyberEnglish. As he developed the Cybrary online at the same time two students at Stanford created Yahoo, Ted morphed into a Cybrarian (http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/cybrarian.html). It was this creation that drew the ire of librarians for his audacity. Ted assuaged the librarians after publishing “Morphing from Teacher to Cybrarian” (http://web.archive.org/web/20050207194325/http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan99/nellen.htm) in MultiMedia Schools in Jan/Feb 1999 issue and with a follow up presentation at the magazine’s conference in Washington. Ted is an etymologist as reported in the New York Times in 1992, “Going Back to Classics to See How Words Work.” (http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/18/education/going-back-to-classics-to-see-how-words-work.html) He explained that he coined the word “Cybrarian” because he was a “maintainer of cyberspace in his classroom” just as a “librarian” is a maintainer of books and an “agrarian” is a maintainer of the field. Over the early pioneering years, Ted developed many pages in his Cybrary (http://www.Tnellen.com/school/cylib.html) that have become important online resources: The HTML Style Sheet (http://www.Tnellen.com/school/basic.html), a resource he created for his scholars as they created their own webapges; Literary Terms (http://www.Tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/), that became a universal resource for his scholars and others, the CyberEnglish syllabus(http://www.Tnellen.com/cybereng/log.html), and online publications of all his publications (http://www.tnellen.com/ted/#pu) , presentations (http://www.tnellen.com/ted/#pr), and musings about CyberEnglish that became a roadmap for others who wanted to incorporate the ideas of CyberEnglish in their teaching.

Ted’s philosophy of “Practical Theory” was the result of how CyberEnglish was an exchange of steps between practicing his craft and theorizing about his craft. Neither preceded the other, they followed each other in a rhythm. This cadence was an intellectual walking pace as he navigated the new classroom. Ted developed a Practical page, CyberEnglish (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/) which represented his daily practice in the classroom and a Theory page, CyberEnglish, the Web-Book (http://www.tnellen.net/cyberenglish/) which detailed his thinking and theories of CyberEnglish. Both these pages have links to the work of his scholars from 1994 – 2000 in the three schools he taught, links to other teacher’s pages, articles about CyberEnglish, as well as links to his lessons, presentations, and publications. Ted’s belief is that if we make our work public as he has done, we don’t need to rely solely on state tests. Ted believes these webfolios should serve as testaments to the work of the scholars.

Awards
1986: Named a Shakespeare scholar after study in Stratford-upon-Avon. 1993: Reliance Award, Finalist: Teacher of the Year for Manhattan High School 1995: Board of Education, Manhattan High School Finalist, Teacher of the Year 1999: Named to eSchoolNews First Impact 30 group. 1999: Scholar in the Program for K-12 Teachers and Teacher Educators, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, First year.

Ted Nellen began teaching in 1974. His own education, as well as the fact his own parents were college professors, informed his decision to teach and why he wanted to be a teacher. TED wasn’t a traditional teacher for long. After ten years, he moved into a computer room and never left it.

Educational Philosophy
Ted is a Constructivist. He developed this philosophy at Skidmore College when as an English major he took a bookbinding course. The professor explained the course as a response to the other arts. A writer, unlike other artists, is not in control of their work. After it is written it is handed over to a publisher who then decides on paper, font, ink color, binding, and distribution. In this class we would write poetry and then we would use a hand press, select ink, choose paper and fonts, hand bind the book and then distribute them. Each student made five books and then took them to two bookstores in Saratoga Springs. Ted sold four books and learned a great deal from that class that began the creation of CyberEnglish in the 1990’s. Another early influence for CyberEnglish was introduced to Ted when he took correspondence courses during his Army service in Vietnam after high During his early teaching years in private boarding schools he developed his publishing skills as he was the advisor on yearbooks, school newspaper, and learned photography and the darkroom skills necessary in being the complete artist. After five years in these New England Prep schools Ted moved to NYC to spend a year as an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich before returning to the classrom in the adult education program at Murry Bergtraum HS which eventually led to becoming a teacher in the high school in 1983 where he taught until 2000.

Practice
It was at Murry Bergtraum HS where Ted developed his CyberEnglish course in one of the computer labs. In 1983 he began teaching in a computer room. Every day he had an epiphany. During those early years, he wrote software in DOS and basic C++ to use with his scholars to improve their reading and writing skills. He dabbled with his networked lab until the birth of the WWW. He immediately created webpages for himself and his work. In 1993 he asked the Dorsai Embassy to come in and install a linux server. He obtained the domain mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us for the school and began giving the students in his CyberEnglish class accounts. Ted was a pioneer in computer use in schools as his students used the email and webpage features to begin to publish their work. They were the first students to publish their work on the Internet. Ted developed a mantra: “Make your work public, engage in peer review, and pass your work on.” This epiphany was born from his own doctoral work at Teachers College. He observed that only PhD candidates made their work public, engaged in peer review, and passed it on. Ted wanted to have his scholars do this in his high school English class. He teamed up with a history teacher colleague, John Elfrank-Dana. During this time at MBHS, Ted was involved with NCTE and present at many national conferences to encourage technology use in schools and inspired many teaches to use technology and adopt CyberEnglish in their classes. While associated with NCTE, he joined forces with Dawn Hogue, Nancy Patterson, Pat Schulze, and others to show that CyberEnglish could be done in other schools and in other state by other teachers. In addition, Ted spread the word about the ethics of teaching with the Internet long before social networks came along by publishing articles and writing chapters in books that spoke and explained about the “correct” use of technology in classrooms in many schools and at other conferences.

In 2000, Ted left MBHS and started passing his experience with CyberEnglish on to the schools in the Alternative High School Superintendency. Ted worked with teachers in schools, Chris Lehmann, Camilla Saly, and others to make their own webpages and then helped them in their classrooms replicate what he had done at MBHS. In 2003, the superintendency became a victim of reorganization. So Ted helped start a school in Queens, Information Technology HS, which was created from the ideas Ted had developed with CyberEnglish. At ITHS, TED set up accounts for the first class of ninth graders and then provided professional development for the new staff. By the end of the first year all students and teachers were creating webpages and using them to publish their classwork and to publish their syllabi. He worked with teachers, Heather Conn, Umit Serin, and others to create a technologically savvy school. In 2006 it was time for Ted to move on again to develop another project, Cyber School, so he returned to a school he had previously worked in and had done Professional Development for the Alternative HS Superintendency. Edward A Reynolds West Side HS was a transfer school and needed a Cyber School. Ted joined former colleagues to develop a Cyber School and continued the work he had been doing in previous years. In addition, he continued teaching CyberEnglish.

In February 2012, Ted Nellen retired.

Biographical
Born: Dayton, Ohio, Oct 25 1949 US Army 1968-1970 Skidmore College, 1974 Two sisters (teachers), Three children, [two daughters (teachers), one son] Two grandchildren CV http://www.tnellen.com/ted/