Origin of TELL (Total Environment Learning Laboratory)

Concurrent with all of the excitement stemming from my multiple image demonstrations throughout 1966-68 my earlier ideas for a Perceptual Learning Center grew ambitious and far more complex. I developed a succession of ideas, designs and sketches that visualized experiential simulation (virtual reality) media rich teaching laboratories that ran the gamut from personal modules to large scale architectural environments designed to address individual and team teaching academic and vocational disciplines throughout the Laney College campus. This was the birth of what I named TELL (Total Environment Learning Laboratory).

This activity received the fortuitous enthusiastic support of new incoming President Dr. Wallace T. Homitz in 1966. Dr. Homitz interest in the TELL Sensorium project was powerful and we became very close working collaborators both on funding proposals and instructional utilization concepts. He immediately freed me from half of my teaching responsibilities to pursue these ideas.
Dr. Homitz brought intellectual rigor to the project and was instrumental in drawing local and national attention to the efficacy of the TELL project among Community College educators throughout the country.

Also see: TELL Proposal, TELL Images

© Roger Ferragallo