From 1997 to 2000, as a seventh grade science teacher in a Flagstaff, Arizona middle school, I worked to make the classroom a student-centered, collaborative learning environment. Although there are many science concepts to teach at the seventh grade level, I worked with my students to develop a constructionist learning environment. Students created usable artifacts with which they conducted “experiments” about concepts and created technology-based artifacts to demonstrate their understandings of these concepts.
As a faculty member in the Educational Technology department at NAU since 2000, I have taught at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, in both online and face-to-face formats.
At the present I am the primary designer and lead faculty for our undergraduate courses. These focus on future classroom teachers in an undergraduate teacher preparation program. These course are taught face-to-face in a hybrid (Macintosh and Windows platforms) lab. Through the creation of artifacts, the students demonstrate an understanding of essential educational software and work to integrate these technologies into the learning environment by developing and presenting content-based lessons which incorporate student activities using this software. Furthermore, I oversee all hybrid versions of these courses taught at statewide sites. Although the course has been designed by faculty on the Mountain campus, I work in cooperation with facilitators at the statewide sites courses who work with the students in a face-to-face leaning environment.