Presenting a Paper at Duke University, June 17, 2009 - and Other Summer Plans

In June, I'll travel to Duke University to present a paper at the Alice Symposium (Alice is a 3D animation program), and I'm very excited about this opportunity. I've never been to North Carolina! My goal is to develop collaboration between teachers to create Alice 3D animiation tutorials that can be used by middle school teachers to help engender critical thinking in core subjects that relate to standards. I'd also like to stimulate partnerships between the developers of the Alice program and tech schools that teach 3D animation modeling. In this way, perhaps we can develop a larger bank of 3D objects that the Alice program can use that include characters and environments middle school students encounter in their core subject areas.

During the summer, I have also applied for an IISME fellowship to work with Adobe in order to gain a better understanding of the business world, in hopes of bringing this knowledge back into the classroom next fall. I will also be teaching some classes at RAFT during the summer, so it's shaping up to be an exciting next few months!

Journal Article on My New Learning Theory

The April/May 2009 issue of Innovate Journal (an online, peer-reviewed educational magazine) published an article on the new learning theory and instructional design model that I developed over the past four years while working on my doctorate. The magazine held a Webcast last week, and have now archived it, so by going to the Webcast link and logging in, you can hear it for yourself. Just go to Innovate Journal to view the article and to navigate to the Webcast. You just have to sign up (free!) to log in.