User:Neiltorda

About Me
I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina in a house built in 1884 as the main farm house for a 200+ acre apple orchard. I drive a '71 Porsche 911T. As much as it would seem that I like old things, I also love technology. I am currently enrolled in the New Media and Global Education Masters program at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.

I have lived in:
 * Asheville, Waynesville, Cullowhee and Tuckaseigee, NC
 * Washington, DC
 * Aspen Hill, MD
 * Phoenix, AZ
 * Winter Park, FL

I am a 14th generation Floridian and my family is a member of the |Los Floridanos

Experience
 * Digital Media Lecturer, Coulter Faculty Center, Western Carolina University
 * HelpDesk Manager, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ
 * Macintosh Team Lead, Digicon Corp. on contract to National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD

Education and Certifications
 * B.S. Ed., Western Carolina University
 * Currently working on M.A in New Media and Global Education, Appalachian State University
 * Final Cut Pro 6 Level 1 Certification

Presentations


 * Stream...Cast....Blog? Fishing for New Ways to Feed Your Digital Content - Presenters: Neil Torda, Phillip Garrison
 * Faculty and training professionals have many different options for delivering digital content to end users, such as streaming, progressive download, or podcasting. In the past, each of these delivery methods has operated as an island of digital storage. Once people learned how to get to one of the islands, they were reluctant to try new methodologies. The faculty center at our university began to research ways to bridge those islands, allowing for a central repository of digital content. This presentation will describe how this new, easy to use system allows faculty to feed their content into multiple delivery streams without having to upload their files to multiple servers.
 * 2008 UNC TLT Conference


 * Tablet PCs in Teaching and Learning: Truth or Dare? - Presenters: Kathleen Kyzer, Marc Tilliett - UNC-CH, Neil Torda - WCU
 * The tablet PC appears to have great potential for some courses and among some instructors, but there are still a number of questions regarding its widespread adoption. How do we know in which circumstances we, as instructional technology professionals, should advocate for its integration into the classroom? And how do we begin the process? Two UNC institutions, UNC-Chapel Hill and Western Carolina University have implemented pilot programs beginning in the Fall 2006 semester to explore, document and assess the efficacy and value of tablet PC technology as a teaching tool. This presentation will focus on strategies for selecting participating instructors, crafting appropriate orientation and training options, building communities of interest, and developing assessment models for their respective pilots.
 * 2006 UNC Cause Conference


 * Content Management: Challenges and Lessons Learned - Presenters - Neil Torda - WCU, G. Philip Rogers, Todd Nicolet - UNC- CH,  Troy Hurteau, Ellen McDaniel - NCSU
 * Panelists from Western Carolina, the UNC School of Public Health, and the NCSU College of Engineering will lead a discussion covering general concepts about what to look for in CMS systems, technologies to explore and choose from, and specific applications that are effective tools for content development, workflow, and delivery. The WCU panelist will describe how CMS systems and Wikis are being used at WCU in both the classroom and among staff to increase collaboration. The UNC-SPH project introduced major changes to the page design, information architecture, publishing processes, and back-end technology associated with the UNC-SPH web site. This site includes more than 10,000 content items and features a decentralized content-management model for keeping content up to date. NCSU-COE has been rebuilding web sites to meet accessibility requirements, decomposing table-based layouts to separate page design from content, and blending established tools and infrastructure with new Web 2.0 tools.
 * 2006 UNC Cause Conference