Showcase of my Work


Throughout my Master of Arts in Educational Technology degree at Michigan State University, I have tried to take my learning into my classroom to improve my teaching. I have come a long way in my teaching practice during these 3 years. Check out my classroom page to see more about my current teaching.

​This page showcases the work I have done in graduate school, both as a teacher and as a lifelong learner. I have divided the page into these categories:
  1. Research & learning​
  2. Classroom instruction
  3. Changing mindsets​

Research & Learning
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PicturePresenting at GREAT17, July 2017 (a small Educational Technology conference run by my grad school cohort in Galway, Ireland)
DIFFERENTIATION AND DATA-DRIVEN LEARNING
This project involved researching and presenting at an Educational Technology conference about a current trending topic in education. I enjoyed researching differentiation because I have always struggled to help ALL my students learn when I give the same instruction and tasks to the whole class. Before presenting at the #GREAT17 conference, my partner and I researched ways to use data at the school-wide level, or in the classroom, in order to adapt your instruction to your students' needs and provide differentiated instruction or tasks. For more info, download our presentation or read my reflection and summary.
PictureOne of our results slides (July 2017)
EXPERIMENT DESIGN ABOUT STUDENT MOTIVATION
This project focused on designing and implement an experiment about a question that mattered to us, and then analyze the data. My group focused on the question: "Does student choice affect student motivation?" We created an experiment, sending one of two surveys to students age 16-20: a student choice project or a project with no choice. The results were fairly clear: students reported that they would spend more time on average when they were given choice than no choice! Read more here or check out our presentation.

Classroom Instruction
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IMAGINE IT: STUDENTS AS MATHEMATICIANS
This project focused on dreaming a classroom that no longer has one of the problems/difficulties yours has today, and then coming up with a plan to implement it. What I imagined for my classroom was having my students able to think and do math as mathematicians. (Honestly this is now my ongoing emphasis.)

To make this happen, I focus(ed) on three things:
1) Flipping my classroom - students watch instructional videos at home to learn and have more time in class to practice
2) Problem solving - emphasizing applications and word problems much more than just "solving problems"
3) Growth mindset - encouraging my students to persevere in problem solving
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After my first year of a flipped classroom, 65% of students said the videos taught them well or very well, and 27% found them average.
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After my first year of flipped teaching, 60% of students said their ability to persevere in problem solving improved significantly.
PicturePublished July 2015
ULTIMATE STEM: 49 AMAZING TEACHING MOMENTS IN STEM
As one of my first grad school assignments, I was asked to write up one lesson plan that is a highlight from my math class. Then our whole cohort published a book with our "best in STEM" lessons. It was a challenge to choose a lesson and I may not have picked the same lesson today. Yet I still stand by this review activity I have used over the years: a mini whiteboard review challenge that involves collaboration yet also individual accountability. Check out the whole book (49 STEM lessons) or my lesson plan page.
PictureScreenshot from my video demo for my maker ed project.
MAKER ED LESSON: SCRATCH
The Maker Ed project involved choosing a difficult topic for students in class and then designing a class activity that fits with the hands-on, learning through experimentation style of the Maker Movement. While this is not easy to do for Advanced Algebra content, I chose to focus on rate of change (slope and derivatives). The program used here, Scratch, is accessible to students of all ages and through designing their own "code" hopefully they will understand the topic more conceptually as well as procedurally.
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
In this project I created a professional development session based on the topics my group had been exploring: flipped classrooms and engaging teaching. My goal was to "revolutionize" professional development so I created a 90 minute hands-on workshop session entitled "Inviting + Engaging = Empowering." Seeking to demonstrate to teachers how they can actively engage and empower their students, I decided to have them participate in the entire session by modeling the methods from Teach Like a Pirate (thanks Dave Burgess) and flipped classroom (thanks Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams). Check out the PD plan here.

Changing Mindsets
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PictureAttribution at end of page
WICKED PROBLEM: FAILURE
The Wicked problem project gave us an opportunity to choose a dilemma that we observe in our schools that does not have an easy solution (or maybe not one at all), and to research and present some strategies to "overcome" this issue in our classrooms. My topic: failure and mistakes. Students typically do not embrace failure the way we, as teachers, wish they would - as a learning experience that helps them become better students. Researching and presenting on this topic helped me realize that although fostering a growth mindset in how our students respond to failure isn't easy, some things I want to emphasize in my classroom are: 1) grading reform, 2) re-defining failure, and 3) encouraging productive struggle. For more information, check our our resources or our presentation.
PictureCreated in our class July 2016
MINDSETS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY
Thinking about people's mindsets regarding using technology in the classroom was helpful so I can help my colleagues integrate technology more meaningfully in their instruction and with the right mindset:
Mindset 1: Nothing much changes, technology is used as a tool for the same tasks as before ... NOT IDEAL
Mindset 2: Technology has changed the world through networking & access to more information; students are able to explore, create and share in class
Photos my own unless otherwise specified.
Image credits: 
flikr (creative commons stock images) in the slideshow
Teach Like a Pirate: http://daveburgess.com/ 
Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams https://www.iste.org/resources/product?ID=2285
"Retrain your brain" Creative commons - https://pixabay.com/p-743166/?no_redirect 
Ultimate STEM book cover - publicly available on https://www.scribd.com/document/280381240/Ultimate-Stem-The-Book