About Me

My name is Bill Price, and I’m the technology coordinator of the University of Pittsburgh English Language Institute. I’ve also been teaching ESL there for five years.

My academic background is in applied linguistics and TESOL, but I’ve tied technology into my work and activities since I was a child. Through middle school and high school, I built at least a dozen websites, three of which I administered on behalf of a club or organization. I also learned to program more generally. After I became the senior editor of my high school’s literary magazine, I spent my time at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Information Technology summer program making a content management system from scratch using PHP and a MySQL backend to enable students to digitally submit their writing and artwork to the literary magazine and comment on each others’ work. In the following months, my senior project was to build a website for the German department of my high school.

In my undergraduate (Cornell University, linguistics and cognitive science) and postgraduate (University of Pittsburgh, applied linguistics and TESOL) studies, I became interested in computer-assisted language learning. The vocabulary acquisition and retention experiments I ran continued to put my programming skills to the test, but a bit of patience and enthusiasm can take you a long way when your goal is to help people learn robustly and efficiently.

View my full LinkedIn profile!

Bill Price

Bill Price

Technology Coordinator and Instructor at the University of Pittsburgh English Language Institute

Location
Greater Pittsburgh Area
Industry
Higher Education
Current
  1. University of Pittsburgh,
  2. Future Imperfect
Previous
  1. Google,
  2. University of Pittsburgh,
  3. Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
Education
  1. University of Pittsburgh

Experience

Technology Coordinator, English Language Institute

University of Pittsburgh
– Present (3 years 6 months)

Develop, deploy, and/or maintain computer-assisted language learning technologies and materials in an intensive adult ESL program, including software for computers and smartphones, online services, and presentation technologies. Regularly hold training workshops for teachers on new and emerging classroom technologies. Help teachers to troubleshoot any technological issues which arise in the course of teaching. Catalog and maintain inventory of technology supplies for teachers. Regularly attend conferences on technology in education and computer-assisted language learning and implement relevant technologies and insights within the context of the English Language Institute.

Teaching Assistant / Instructor, English Language Institute

University of Pittsburgh
– Present (6 years 2 months)

Teach intensive adult ESL courses in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and grammar. Develop and deploy novel curricular materials. Continuously assess students in multiple skill domains and across multiple modalities of language to address curricular goals and standards.

Founding Author

Future Imperfect
– Present (2 years 8 months)http://billcprice.com/futureimperfect/

Future Imperfect is a technology-in-education resource which helps educational professionals connect to and utilize cutting-edge technological resources in their teaching and curricula. I bring together my specialties in technology and teaching by clearly communicating best practices and actionable ideas to a professional audience.

Consultant (freelance)

Google
– (8 months)

MA-PhD Student

University of Pittsburgh
– (3 years 5 months)

MA-PhD program in Applied Linguistics

Research Assistant, Department of Linguistics

University of Pittsburgh
– (2 years 9 months)

Developed written course materials and evaluations for an online ESL course and deployed them using the Open Learning Initiative tools developed by Carnegie Mellon University.

Teaching Assistant

Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
– (2 years)Bristol, Rhode Island

Teaching Assistant for the Etymology course at the Bristol, RI site of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth, summers 2008, 2009, and 2010, for a total of five three-week sessions.

Browsing Library Attendant

Cornell University
– (3 years 4 months)Ithaca, New York Area

Maintained inventory of periodicals, including keeping existing stock sorted, adding new arrivals daily, and selling older issues. Helped visitors check out books and board games. Maintained the computer kiosks which were available for visitors' use.

Editorial Assistant

Multilingual Matters
– (3 months)Ithaca, New York Area

Copy-editing selected proceedings of the Cornell Conference on Language and Poverty (2005) for publication.

Research Assistant

Cornell Language Acquisition Lab
– (3 months)Ithaca, New York Area

Primarily worked on refining an "experiment bank" website designed to help language acquisition researchers share specific digital instruments and materials with one another.

Cafeteria worker

Cornell University
– (4 months)Ithaca, New York Area

Tasks rotated regularly, but included stocking the beverage areas, sorting and stocking silverware, performing simpler cooking tasks like deep-frying and grilling, and nightly cleaning.

Languages

  1. Korean

    Elementary proficiency

  2. Chinese

    Elementary proficiency

  3. German

    Limited working proficiency

Education

University of Pittsburgh

Certificate, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Cornell University

BA, Linguistics; minor in Cognitive Science

Inducted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society upon graduation, with Magna Cum Laude honors and with distinction in all subjects; conducted original experiment and composed honors thesis entitled "Remembering Chinese Characters: a case study in computer-aided spaced repetition rehearsal"

Activities and Societies: Glee Club, Rotaract, Golden Key, Cornell Undergraduates in Linguistics