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