Leadership

Al Rode

Al Rode was raised in a farming community north of Seattle and grew up sailing and fishing in the San Juan Islands. His first job as a computer programmer was writing a concatenation program in Turbo Pascal for his linguistics professor that read books and created a database of cyrillic words.

In 1984, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Western Washington University. Then Al served as a junior officer onboard two US Navy destroyers in the Pacific until 1991. Al left the US Navy and attended UCSD where he started teaching high school science and math. He also taught many extracurricular classes including chess, model rocketry, math, and science olympiad.

Al’s first teaching experience was taking over for an eighth grade computer science class in a Title I school in San Diego. It was an Apple II lab and he was told he’d have to make his own curriculum. His advisor suggested using Logowriter and so he started teaching his students how to program with a turtle. By the end of the school year, Al’s students wrote poetry with their computers and built a physics simulator with a flying turtle.

In 1994, Al helped write a technology grant for his school and then presented the results of the grant at the National Council of Mathematical Teachers Conference. In one project, he built a standalone multimedia platform using Supercard that eighth graders could use in the classroom to record their work while they were solving problems with their partner. Ambassadors escorted guests through the classroom.

The multimedia program could replicate itself so students could share and modify their projects with each other. His students called it “Da Thang.” The projects involved students learning how to combine different software tools to come up with interesting and dynamic projects. That same year he helped start an alternative secondary school based on multiple intelligences. Using MSWLogo, a program that he downloaded from Berkeley, Al had eighth grade students building their own chat rooms in the school’s only computer lab.

Al volunteered his time building networks at different schools throughout Sweetwater Union School District. While at the Sweetwater Academy for Individual Learning Styles, Al helped with the supervision and upgrading of the district’s network servers that resulted in his school becoming the first site in the district to allow its students and staff network access to individual file folders. He helped develop SUHSD’s strategic plan for implementing technology from 1997-1999.

During this time, Al led district scoring sessions and gathered baseline data for measuring mathematics achievement in his district. In 1997, he was serving on three committees - the Math Leadership Committee, District Technology Advisory Committee, and he was the School site Council Chairperson. He was also interning as an administrator. Finally, in 1998, Al earned a Masters of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction from UCSD. The title of his thesis was Learning by Design: New Ideas for Integrating Technology into Middle School Classrooms. The thesis was actually a compendium of new ideas that challenged young students to use computers in unique ways to motivate and improve their learning.

Twenty five years later, Al is still writing and testing new curriculum for students regardless of their previous experiences in education. Last year he coached a VEX robotics team. He continues taking online classes learning Python, Robotics, Cryptography, Accounting, Network and Game Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and even Chinese. Last year he built a Web Scraper. His latest interest is helping build mobile classrooms that will reach out to children who don’t have access to education. Al is presently teaching high school and serving as President for the US Children’s Chamber of Commerce.

Matt Fok

Mr. Matt Fok is the Founder and CEO of eLearningZoom and eZ-Xpo that delivers the world's all-in-1 Virtual Collaborative Network and empowers organizations to connect, collaborate, and promote through networks of virtual expo, virtual training, and virtual job fair with built-in SEO Booster and marketing automation for massive daily traffic and leads.

He has comprehensive entrepreneurial technology experiences in sales/marketing, strategic planning, business development, and product management. He has strong knowledge of telecommunication, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), B2B, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Web Conferencing, and e-Business Infrastructure Technology. He is well-versed in intercultural communication and business practices with business partners in Asia, China, and Europe.

Mr. Fok is an online and on-campus Adjunct Faculty Professor at Benedictine University, Capella, and AIU Online for the undergraduate and graduate M.B.A. program for over fifteen years. He is also a facilitator/lecturer for undergraduate and graduate courses in strategic management, global marketing, and technology management courses. He holds his M.B.A. in International Marketing and Finance from the University of San Francisco, McLaren School of Business. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State, San Luis Obispo.

He has successfully developed global product strategy and launched profitable products with over $100M accumulative sales through comprehensive product delivery life cycle. He has served as a Senior Strategic Product Manager for many companies including Kana Software Inc., Siebel Inc., AT&T, and IBM in Bay Area, CA.

Matt Fok is also the author of “How to JumpStart Your Business with Zero Advertising!”