Stem talk line-up for Spring 2003:
February 4
Dr. JoAnne Ollerenshaw
NH Department of Education
www.ed.state.nh.us
JOllerenshaw@ed.state.nh.us
“Storytelling:
Teaching Native American Students Using the Oral Tradition”
The
oral tradition of storytelling is perhaps the oldest and most powerful tool for
teaching and learning. Stories orally communicate history and knowledge. The
stories told by Native American communities are particularly significant for
communication about culture, heritage, language, and ways of knowing and doing.
Native American pre-service teachers learned storytelling strategies to teach
science using a standards-based curriculum incorporating Umonhon language and
Umonhon culture aligned with the state's local renewal accountability plan in
the reservation school. Examples of this experience will be provided during the
presentation. -----
February 18
Rose Doherty and Todd Leach
Rose A. Doherty
Assistant Dean and Director
Liberal Arts and Criminal Justice Programs
University College
Northeastern University
Email: r.Doherty@neu.edu
Todd Leach
Associate Dean
Business Administration and Information Technology Programs
University College
Northeastern University
t.leach@neu.edu
“Virtual Survival: Strategic Planning for Distance Learning”
Institutions have used a number of
innovative strategies and creative schemes to launch their distance learning
initiatives. Over the past few years, we have seen many of them fail to reach
self-sufficiency, including a number of highly visible efforts by well-known
institutions.
Survival in the virtual world
almost seems as difficult to obtain as post-Internet venture capital. The factors that have determined the
survival of today's distance learning operations will remain with us tomorrow,
but there are new twists, new rivals, and new strategies to factor in if you
want to be competitive in tomorrow's environment. Knowing what has worked in the past, and anticipating what
changes to expect from the future, are the best ways to avoid being added to
the growing casualty list.
March 4
Dr. Jesse Heines
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Massachusetts Lowell
heines@cs.uml.edu
Web:
http://www.cs.uml.edu/~heines
“Creating and Maintaining
Data-Driven Course Web Sites”
Numerous student and faculty
surveys have shown that parties on both sides of the podium consistently laud
the instructional benefits of course Web sites. Many of us have worked long hours creating course Web sites to
augment the instructional activities we use in our classrooms and labs. Even with commercial tools -- general
purpose ones as well as those designed specifically for course Web sites -- the
task is time-consuming at best and laborious at worst. But as difficult as creating a rich course
Web site may be, maintaining it -- keeping its content and links current and
updating the site when the course is revised -- is even more arduous. Even for those of us who are highly
dedicated and have the best of intentions, the amount of work that seems to
need to be redone each semester is so frustrating that we often give up and
leave things the way they were. This
talk will examine alternative approaches to specifying course content and links
using XML and XSL as opposed to straight HTML (or HTML generated by course Web
site creation tools). It will examine
the pros and cons of such an approach and present examples of how a good course
Web site might be made even better by employing it, or at least made easier to
maintain. It will also examine the serendipitous benefits of working in XML and
XSL that allow material designed to be used for one purpose to also be used for
another. The goal of these approaches
is to make course Web site creation and maintenance more efficient without
impacting their benefits to student learning.
April 1
Steven D. Brewer
Biology Department, UMass
sbrewer@bio.umass.edu
“Supporting Collaborative Student Writing: Veni, Vidi,
Wikiwiki!”
Collaborative learning, in spite of its tremendous benefits,
is difficult for many instructors to implement successfully for anything other
than low-stakes student projects. Wikis
are networked collaborative document development systems that can empower
students to collaborate effectively by reducing the barriers to collaboration,
increasing accountability, and providing more data to instructors on student
participation. Wikis are simple to use
and can retain all previous versions of documents, which both safeguards
student work and provides a
detailed history of a document’s development to the
instructor. I will present a detailed
case history of the implementation and use of a wiki in one course, some
solutions to problems encountered, and an analysis of successful student
strategies in using the wiki for collaboration.
April 15
Maureen Brown Yoder
Program Director, Professor
On-line Technology in Education Program
School of Education
Lesley University
myoder@mail.lesley.edu
“Inquiry Based Learning and Technology: Using the Internet
to Enhance and Invigorate Your Teaching”
What would Socrates' home page look like? How would
Piaget and Bruner use the Internet to captivate their students? This
session will help you explore YOUR best teaching strategies and how technology
can enhance them. Emphasis will be on inquiry and project based learning
and teaching in any subject area from elementary through university level.
You may already be using the wealth of information, and the communication and
collaboration opportunities made possible by the Internet, but you will see
examples and learn strategies for optimizing its potential and revitalizing
your teaching.
Dr. Maureen Brown Yoder is the Program Director of the
Lesley University Online Graduate Program
in Technology in Education. She taught in K-12 classrooms for 15 years
and now works with teachers who are integrating technology in their
schools. Her most recent article appears in the February issue of
Learning and Leading With Technology.
May 6
Dr. Robert C. Barkman
Dept. of Education
Springfield College
“A Classroom Within a Company: An
Innovative Partnership to Teach and Inspire Tomorrow’s Scientists and
Engineers”
Authors: Robert C. Barkman, Ph.D., professor of
biology/chemistry and education, Springfield College, Springfield, Mass;, J.
Kenneth Maltese, project director, Springfield Water, LLC, Springfield; Nora
Burke Patton, president, Burke & Company Public Relations, Springfield; and
Erline L. Provost, director of science, Springfield Public Schools,
Springfield.
Various
researchers have investigated the reasons why science has often alienated
students, especially females and members of minority groups. For example, minorities and females often
have a negative attitude of the usefulness of science in “real life,” and this
attitude contributes to their lack of participation in science. By creating a “Classroom in a Company,” this
project seeks to use the world outside the classroom as a resource to bring
interest, variety, and work-related dimensions to learning in subjects across
the curriculum for the entire fifth grade of Springfield Public Schools. Moreover, the curricula will help teachers
raise student achievement by meeting the state’s standards in
science/engineering, math, and language arts.
The project proposes to link professional and curriculum development of
math and reading to the authentic science and engineering experience students
receive during a one day program at the city of Springfield’s wastewater
treatment facility. The key to the
success of this project is a unique school-industrial-college partnership.