A Caldron of Creativity : Learning center aims to bring teachers up to speed in the world of computers and generate classroom materials.

Despite his aerospace engineering degree from USC, Pasadena Alternative School math teacher Kaz Iptchilar calls himself “a technological illiterate.”

He doesn’t have a computer or a VCR. “I don’t even own an answering machine,” he said.

Computers at his school are likewise dated: 15 decade-old Apple IIe’s shared by 300 students. But with the Pasadena Unified School District drawing up plans to wire its schools with fiber-optic networks and ‘90s-horsepower machines, Iptchilar wants to be ready.

On weekends, he immerses himself in electronic technology at the Teachers Learning Center, a partnership between USC and the nonprofit arts organization Visual Communications. The purpose of the center, which is on the USC campus, is twofold: to bring kindergarten through high school teachers, many of whose childhoods predated personal computers, up to speed in the newfangled world of multimedia and the Internet, and to create learning materials to take back to the classroom.

“We’re trying to retrain ourselves with some of this more modern technology,” Iptchilar said.

He has learned about the World Wide Web. He has learned how to scan in and edit digital images. He is helping create a CD-ROM that will accompany a grant proposal to Apple Computer.

“What we’re trying to do is to empower teachers to teach other teachers and students,” said USC electrical engineering professor Gino Tu Cheng, co-director of the center. “Basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic will be replaced by querying, computing and creating. These students will be ready for the information jobs of the 21st century.”

Cheng envisions his center as a nexus where teachers can learn the basics and school districts can pool their knowledge and experiences to avoid creating unintended barriers--such as incompatible computer systems. “It seems they’re all reinventing the wheel,” Cheng said. “There’s no coherent strategy.”

Since Cheng and Visual Communications director Linda Mabalot set up the learning center last summer, they’ve drawn the interest of 400 teachers from 123 schools spanning 22 Southern California school districts. While the center teaches the teachers, the teachers in turn have offered about 200 ideas for multimedia projects that the center could undertake.

“They have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t,” Cheng said.

One kindergarten teacher suggested putting together a CD-ROM to teach children the value of money. Another teacher was interested in world cultures. Several others wanted multilingual multimedia projects in Spanish and Cantonese. An El Monte teacher suggested math games.

These ideas were rolled into one: a tour of world cultures through money.

On a recent afternoon, USC sophomore Ravi Soin demonstrated the prototype.

On his Macintosh screen was a picture of India’s 50-rupee bill. He moved the mouse pointer over one image on the bill: India’s national emblem of four female tigers sitting in a square, looking outward. A click there revealed the emblem’s meaning: India peering out toward the four corners of the world.

Similarly, a click on the list of 11 languages that India prints on all of its paper money brought up information about that nation’s Babel of tongues.

Other screens told of India’s government, of the history of paper money (the Chinese invented it in AD 105, then banned it for 250 years after overprinting caused runaway inflation), of India’s culture and arts.

When completed, this software will offer sixth- and seventh-graders a virtual journey through the currency of a dozen countries. The story line is that the player is applying for a job as head of the presidential committee for currency exchange. Games and quizzes test the students’ knowledge.

The software will be pressed onto CD-ROMs this summer and offered to schools in the fall at cost--a few dollars each.

Through partnerships with the county’s Museum of Natural History, the California Museum of Science and Industry, the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles Zoo and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the learning center is able to receive free materials for its multimedia efforts. “I’m free too,” Soin added.

That allows the center to consider projects that might not be commercially viable. Commercial multimedia developers generally have to pay $10 for each image they use, Cheng said, and $40 to $50 for each second of video.

The center will be adapting an upcoming exhibit on cats at the natural history museum for its second CD-ROM. Another project about earthquakes is on the drawing board.

But whatever multimedia brings into the classroom, Pasadena’s Iptchilar doesn’t see it replacing his traditional methods.

“We cannot abdicate teaching,” he said. “This will be one component.”