Eileen O’Connor
What YOU will need to create
• Brief pre-MAT background• Info about your teaching, if you are doing so now:
– What school, grade level, classes– Are you a TA or the official teacher?
• Personal background, that you may choose to share (not required)
• The use of schematics (see my Venn diagram) and images with callouts – to talk about yourself , your present teaching, or your anticipated teaching
Loved ones
Me
Daughters & sons
Skinny hubbie
Son-in-law
Grandchildren
My background highlights
Education B.A. – biology w/ chemistry minor, College of New Rochelle, 1969 Masters of Civil Eng – in Environmental Science & Engineering,
Polytechnic Institute of NY, 1981 Ph.D. – Science Education & Instructional Technology – University at
Albany, 1997
Work summary – link to resume: K12 Teaching – 4th grade & science 4th – 8th (1969-70) Chemistry – Dept of Labs & Research & Technicon (1975-1980) IBM (1980-1989) Consulting in K12 – Albany, Troy / science & tech professional
development (1998 – 2004) Higher Ed – 1990 – present College of St. Rose – chemistry & computers 1990 – 1996 U-Albany – 1998 – 2008 (teacher ed part time faculty) RPI – 1998 – 2001 (summer, teacher ed program) Empire State College – 2004 – present (Master of Arts in Teaching program)
My educational philosophies
Engage students in science through
questions & curiosity (inquiry)
Use the world around them –
find the “hooks” into
their lives
Integrate 21st
& science-based
technologies
What follows:
My work with the STEP program
Fun with a microorganism study and with date probes
Neat ways to save research – MindMeister & Diigo
Our course website – you’ll make your own too
Super science projects that MAT masters created this summer
Working with STEP
Every summer I work with the Science Technology Entry Program at U-Albany
This summer we worked in the Second Life virtual island The students planned for a day about a game they
could make in this 3-D environment
They only got about 1 hr. to make games because of tech issues . . . but they were engaged, learning, and having fun
Students are not shown for privacy reasons
Worked w/ urban middle school students on a Second Life project
Students select the available “shapes” for a 3-dimensional game
Then they use the 2-dimensional shapes in Microsoft’s drawing program
to further develop their games
They tested avatar appearance and clothing
Creativity and boldness were evident
Texting on the computer; talking in real time – learning new techniques
They adjusted avatars’ appearances, and moved the camera angles
They interpreted menus & made complex shapes
Some shapes became vehicles, with scripts that made them move
STEP students made real advances
Plan / design on paper & in 2-d and 3-d format
Collaborate, share, & peer
teach
Work in person, in virtual, and in text-based social
format
“Kitchen” science
Can always be a good way to have students see science in the world around them
. . . thus, I played with some experiments
You’ll see more about these in the course, but for now, see the pictures and click-on the videos to see what I was testing
Prepping for the virus/bacteria unit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0mYhOZcAJY - first 2 weeks of the studyhttp://www.slideshare.net/eoconnor/home-science-bread-microorganisms -images & details in a PowerPoint presentation that was uploaded to www.slideshare.com
Some startup work with data probes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAwqEwmt61E - see equipment used here
I took temperature curves of heated water for different solutions –and then brought them into Excel & had fun with the graph format
Making planning & sharing even easier
Mindmeister – lets you work collaboratively (you can be editing from different home computers) through the web on:
organizing ideas (the maps help you plan), and
saving resources
Using e-bookmark
Never collect a good resource without having www.diigo.com open; you don’t have the time to waste
Using mapping to show concepts AND to save links and materials
Links & info has been attached to
many of these branches
E-bookmarking – saving resources is easy & sharing is easy too
Of course, we will need a website
I save my work under SER/VE – the STEM Exploratory Real/Virtual Environment – there will be many tutorials accessible from www.interactivelearningsolutions.net/serve and other sites I will be sending you
Summer science projects
Wonderful work – students selected, studied, and developed science projects to engage students in learning science more deeply
They created wikis/websites that explained the projects
They created pods in Second Life to explain their work
In the following you can see an image from the presentation of their science project in Second Life – come and visit these pod in the SER/VE Second Life private island this semester, after the semester begins
Sharing & learning
A great summer – great enzyme/disease study & good links to free technologies (www.glogster.com)
A great summer – one of the presenters had his class study the
Bronx River
A great summer – learning from students & their science projects
A great summer – ocean issues too? and excellent info on using e-tools in
the classroom
This group made YouTubes too
A great summer – learning about science & literacy from parks & backyards
This is blank until the
speaker clicked on the
embedded website
A great summer – learning from students & their science projects
This is a website that is linked into
Second Life
A great summer – solar cars can integrate many different areas in
physics instruction
Thinking ahead
Soon, you will be developing understandings, ideas, and materials for your classrooms
And, you will be working with colleagues to learn and share
LOOKING FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU!!! Eileen