...back to Martini's Homepage

Last revised 11Jan10

This is the homepage for Bruce R. Martini. I have retired from classroom teaching as of June 2004. I taught for 13 years for the Boise Public Schools at Borah High School in Boise, Idaho. After having taught Introduction to Technology Support Technician and ICT "Information and Communication Technologies" courses, I have had a number of former students email me that they have jobs in the technology field...at salaries significantly larger than my teachers salary. One of the main sources of satisfaction in the teaching profession is knowing you have helped young adults find a place for themselves in the business world...or helped them discover a part of themself through the joys of lifelong learning. It is truly satisfying when they take the time to let you know what they are doing. I also am credentialed to teach Earth Science, Geography, Math, Natural Science, Physical Science (Chemistry and Physics) courses. One of my geology webpages looks at two of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range geomorphic features--inverted topography and Eocene Stream Gravels (goal of 49-er miners). All photographs of these geomorphic features were taken from my vehicle.

My former district of some 26,000 students and 47 schools is networked...each site (LAN), every classroom, linked (WAN) to central district. Thanks to the patrons of our district, we have joined other schools and students from around the planet on the Internet. Every classroom and every student has the myriad of opportunities to explore on the Internet.

I have been fortunate to have had three careers, education being the third. I started working for an international consultant civil engineering firm in 1967. During the 11+ years with the firm, I began programming in FORTRAN, helped establish a 44 office firmwide dial-up network for the exchange of engineering data, and worked in a number of locations including the firm's head office in Los Angeles as well as offices in Cranford, NJ and San Francisco. In 1975-76 I was the administrative manager/ business development coordinator for the firm's two Nigerian offices in Lagos and Illorin. My regional office was London where my new wife and I "had to visit" every 12 weeks or so. We visited Scotland; several trips to Madrid, Spain; and very briefly Geneva, Switzerland. I also worked as a field engineer on jobs in several states. The computer group in which I worked was responsible for, among other projects, seismic analysis of nuclear power plants, Alaskan pipeline design analysis, hurricane storm surge analysis, and Disney World Florida civil, structural, and environmental design analyses.

I worked on one environmental data analysis project for 10 months--at the end of which I had accumulated over 1,000 hours overtime. I took a paid leave of absence during which I re-roofed our 1st home and put an addition on it. I decided that residential construction was a great chang eof pace. Over 7 years later I had become a concrete, brick, and stone mason; finish carpenter; plumber; and built a number of custom homes as a liscensed general building contractor.

During the first year after the birth of our first child in 1983, I decided to go back to school, get a degree in Earth Science, and become a teacher. Since 1988, when I began teaching Earth Science and Chemistry, I also spent two years grant writing, volunteer teaching GATE science, and Site Council chair in our small California community school district. When our two children were in fourth and first grades respectively, we moved to Boise in 1992. Our son graduated from College of Idaho (then Albertson College) and has been working for Starbuck's...in Florida for 2 years, Idaho for 1 year, and now in San Diego. Our daughter is currently attending the University of California at San Diego.

I served on site, district, and state department of education committees during my years teaching in Idaho. In 1994, my district asked me to write curriculum for a series of technology courses. This curriculum was adopted by the State of Idaho Professional-Technical Education Department (IDPTE) and distributed throughout Idaho. In 1999, I was asked to participate in the revision process of this curriculum[revised again in 2004]...see Pages 59 and 60 {note the preceeding is Adobe Acrobat PDF formatted}. The Profession-Technical Education Department for the State of Idaho has revised the approved course offerings for Information Technology courses. The current Information Systems Technology (IST) courses have evolved from the earlier courses which I authored and served on curriculum revision committees for the IDPTE

My classroom structure reflected my years in business. Students worked in groups on every task I assigned--problem solving, projects, demonstrations, and exams. Traditional education's structure reflects the society out of which it was borne. Much National debate has taken place about the present structure of education. The Millennium Presidential Election debates included education-related issues--Class Size, Universal Preschools, and Testing and Accountability. In my opinion, we are moving toward a structure for education which will reflect the society in which our students will work--teams, problem-solving, multi-disciplinary, goal specific, and project-oriented. Their working partnerships will probably be a fluid melding of talents. Groups will form to interact on a project and then disband upon completion of the project. Many of the reforms in education are predicated upon using technology as a tool to facilitate communications.We will have access to virtually every creation, every piece of music, or art,or written (Project Gutenberg) and spoken word mankind has wrought since the beginning of time--including 20,000 year old paintings on the walls of caves. Every utterance of emotion, of ideals, of asperations, of anguish, of dreams, of achievement will be instantaneously accessible to each and every one. This is the future I touched each and every day I welcomed students into my classroom.

While taking a BSU summer course in 1994, I was introduced to the graphical interface of Berner-Lee's re-designed Internet now called "the Web." In the years since, I collected URLs of sites that reflect my interests--particular geology and Earth Science. Other teachers may find my Biology sites or converted Bookmark / list to be of interest. Sadly I haven't made time to maintain this list of websites and as such many of the URLs are out-of-date.

Please comments to: bruce.martini AT spro.net