Hello everyone. Thanks for visiting. I am John Park, the outgoing chair of the Science Education SIG, and Associate Professor of Science Education at North Carolina State University. Your new chair for the SIG is David Slykhuis. He is an Assistant Professor at James Madison University in Virginia. We are looking forward to communicating with you using this blog. Feel free to use this space to discuss anything dealing with technology in science education. Although I am the outgoing chair, … [Read more...]
Do you have a Second Life?
This year I have begun a journey with my colleagues exploring the virtual world of Second Life for teaching, learning, and community building in our university. I am intrigued by the blue waters that Second Life offers for new expressions in communicating, teaching, learning, and multimedia development. New opportunities and professional relationships have developed in world, from taking part in a class with Intellagirl to meeting educators from England, Ireland, and the US. With the desire of … [Read more...]
Get a Second Life!
With all the activity that the Second Life (SL) has generated in the larger community, this year's SITE conference would be a great opportunity for members to learn more about it by playing around in an SL environment. Some SITE members have already mentioned SL in this blog. For example, Jeremy Koester has provided a great resource at http://secondlife.com/. Now Sean McKay has offered to really kick things off by moving us into SL at the SITE conference. Sean has put a lot of work in this, … [Read more...]
Thoughts on Advocacy Issues
As do many of you, I spend a lot of time researching and teaching about a variety of emergent media. (These days I’m focusing on digital storytelling, geocaching and gaming (specifically, Second Life).) However, I continuously find the areas that I wish to work on interrupted by issues related to advocacy. For example, I just read a fascinating article from Edutopia “Education at Risk,” which traces the much of the current NCLB debate back to the Regan years and the “A Nation at … [Read more...]
Early Childhood
Exploring Digital Documentation of Children’s Development The presence of digital technology in early childhood classrooms has grown steadily. The number and quality of presentations and papers concerned with the use of digital tools with young children at professional conferences is also on the rise. … [Read more...]