To be sure, there are people who understand more about certain technologies than Dr. Joy Egbert. But arguably nobody knows more than Dr. Egbert on how to implement that technology into curriculum… how to help teachers engage students in the right way with it.
The Harvest Foundation knows this. It was created in 2000 as a private, family foundation to provide funding for education, specifically for K-12 teacher training in technology, and to support art programs. The Foundation awards grants totaling approximately $500,000 annually.
One grant has helped Dr. Egbert host the LunchTime Tech series. One recent event, in the Cleveland Hall first floor foyer, included Minecraft and video green screen activities for students to take part in.
In addition to the free pizza and drinks (always appreciated by poor, starving college students), 10 Minecraft subscriptions were given away.
A special thanks to the Harvest Foundation for its support. We look forward to Dr. Egbert continuing this work.
Washington State University and the College of Education have signed two Memorandums of Understanding with Okinawa Prefecture city and educational leaders, to pave the way for more Okinawan students to attend WSU.
In consecutive signings, vice president for international programs Asif Chaudhry was the lead authority from WSU. The first signing was a program renewal that will bring secondary education students to the WSU campus in July for an immersive three-week experience. The Okinawa American Language and Culture Camp was housed under the Intensive American Language Center, but will transition away from the IALC and toward the College of Education.
The other MOU was between the College of Education and the Kitanakagusuku Board of Education, for the Online Developing Okinawa Through English (DOTE) program. Using web conferencing and other technology, students in that Japanese school district will take part in a series of weekend classes to help advance their language acquisition and use.
Dean Mike Trevisan represented the College of Education in the signing.
Professor Kelly Ward has been appointed as WSU’s new Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Recognition.
Similar to others who currently work in the provost office, Kelly’s appointment will be 80 percent as vice provost and 20 percent as a College of Education faculty member.
“Given her scholarship and experience, Kelly is enormously qualified for this position and will do well,” said college dean Mike Trevisan. “This appointment spotlights and promotes the skills and talents we have in the college.”
This partnership we have is one that focuses on educational administration and curriculum. We’re thrilled that these administrators want to visit the United States every year. As Mike wrote, it’s no easy task to get to Khon Kaen. The inverse is also true, and when our guests leave, they are always exhausted… but with a smile.
Our guests got to take tours of the Pullman schools, starting with the elementary schools, then moving to Lincoln Middle School, before finishing up at the high school.
They all seemed to really enjoy the school tours from the beginning.
Except Dr. Teerachai Nethanomsak. He didn’t seem to be enjoying it at all.
You see, Dr. Teerachai was slated to throw out the first pitch of the Cougs baseball game that night and he had never thrown a baseball in his entire life. He was beyond nervous. We kept telling him we’d have some sort of training session. He kept looking at the agenda and wondering how we were going to fit it in. Truth be told, so did we. But we didn’t want to say it out loud and scare the guy even more.
And then, as the tour was winding down at Lincoln Middle School, the group stepped into the gym, and kids were throwing tennis balls around and sport management professor Chris Lebens had a great idea: why not have a student here quickly teach him how to throw!
Cue the cameras!
How about principal Cameron Grow’s emphatic strikeout call to end it!!!!!!!!!!
At game time, Dr. Teerachai, was joined by freshman Johnny Sage (sure to be the greatest Coug ballplayer since John Olerud). Notice how our friend has a nice four-seam grip on the ball? He’s learning already!
Then, it was time for the actual throw.
Not bad, not bad. The only thing missing was the ebullient third strike call from Mr. Grow.
And then our Thai friends froze by the fourth inning and we all left.
You see, they’re used to much hotter weather in April. We gave them a cold, windy day. As soon as we left, it started raining. Hard. So, we probably made the right decision.
It was certainly a valuable learning experience for our guests. It always is. And we are able to learn a thing or two, as well. The relationship grows stronger with each passing year. But in terms of this year, it’s a Cougs baseball game first pitch – and the angst leading up to it – that I’ll always remember.
ESL and educational technology professor Joy Egbert will host this semester’s second faculty-led workshop. Her topic will be Creating Engaging Tasks Through Technology Use.
Egbert knows a thing or two about effective technology use in the classroom, as she was instrumental in bringing the TECH-Ed Conference to Washington State University in 2014 and 2015.
In this presentation, she will provide a brief overview of engagement principles and then discuss how technology use can help teachers create engaging tasks across different disciplines.
The event will take place on Thursday, February 16, 2017, from 12:10-1:00 p.m. in CUE 518 on the Pullman campus. The workshop will also be live-streamed for those unable to attend in person.
Faculty-led Workshops are co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the WSU Teaching Academy and the Office of Academic Outreach and Innovation. The topics range. Refreshments are provided.
The full slate of this semester’s workshops is as follows:
Can a new pet help a child learn responsibility? Sure! They can learn how to take a dog for a walk, for example, or make sure the cat’s food bowl gets filled every day, or make sure the goldfish tank gets cleaned out.
But, if you’re of the vein that it’ll just be dad who ends up walking the dog in the end, perhaps here’s another reason to take interest: a new book shows not only what a pet can teach us, but what the pet can teach people about other people. And, if that’s not enough, it shows how the interactions of humans and animals throughout history can shape our own actions, be it moral, ethical or otherwise.
The book is called The Educational Significance of Human and Non-Human Animal Interactions: Blurring the Species Line. and it edited by our own A.G. Rud, distinguished professor in the College of Education, along with Suzanne Rice, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Kansas.
The book contains chapters from scholars from across the country and an array of disciplines to examine the intersection of humans and animals. The topic is on the rise in education and the WSU College of Education has been involved in research on our campus
The book contains three sections exploring human animal interactions from various perspectives. One of them includes examining several K-12 educational practices in which animals play a role. That includes showing how animals serve as teachers to humans, and how animals have characteristics formerly thought to be only the domain of humans.
Who do Zooplankton get their Christmas gifts from?
Santa clausi
(**sound of crickets**)
OK, that doozy aside…
Zooplankton, phytoplankton, and other nutrients, including harmful algae and invasive copepods exist in the Columbia River estuary.
The Columbia River’s 146-mile estuary is one of the largest in the nation. Only the Missouri–Mississippi system carries more water. Rapid population growth has changed land use in the Columbia estuary’s watershed in ways that may affect coastal ecosystems.
That’s where WSU Vancouver professor Tamara Nelson comes in. Believe us when we say it’s not just to save everyone from our corny jokes.
She’s joining two other WSU faculty research to lead student-conducted Columbia estuary research. Why? Because it’s critical to understand how nutrients and organisms from upstream contribute to habitat degradation, and the spread of invasive species.
The official project name is called Columbia River Estuary Science Education and Outreach: a Landscape-scale University–High School Partnership Integrating Scientific and Educational Research.
Yes, it’s a mouthful. So… CRESCENDO, for short.
The high school students gather water, plankton, and hydrographic data in the estuary, to learn about and assess relative effects of cumulative watershed drainage, and local factors such as sewage outflows (there’s gotta be a joke in there somewhere).
Nelson will join Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens and Steve Bollens, both also from the Vancouver campus. The job of the trio is to gauge what students have learned about science and stewardship; students’ ecological knowledge and outlook.
The research plan called for students at five high schools along the estuary to spend two years collecting water samples, plankton tows, and hydrographic data.
Assistant professor Johnny Lupinacci has been awarded an Alaska Airlines Travel Award.
The travel grant is given to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students working in areas related to the university’s Imagine Tomorrow competition. As part of the airline’s three-year title sponsorship of the competition, it agreed to commit three million airline miles to WSU. The miles will be distributed over three years, with the first million starting this year.
Lupinacci is in his third year as faculty of the college’s Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education program. He researches social justice, and environmental equity.
The following are the Imagine Tomorrow research or activity categories:
Food, Energy and Water
The Boeing Aerospace Challenge
The NARA Biofuels Challenge
The McKinstry Built Environment Challenge
The travel that is award by Alaska Airlines must be for:
Attending external conferences, industry events or presentations.
Bringing an expert(s) to campus for lectures or events related to the above categories.
By Paula Groves Price, Associate Dean for Diversity and International Programs
This fall has been an exciting semester for elementary education. It included our WSU students visiting classrooms in Pullman Schools, grades 1-4, and teaching lessons on tribal sovereignty, and integrated critical social justice issues in language arts and mathematics lessons. This helped realize part of my dream of giving our pre-service teachers more practical experience in multicultural lesson planning and culturally-responsive teaching.
Here’s a video we put together about our students working at Jefferson Elementary School in Pullman:
While many teacher education programs across the country require a course on diversity or multiculturalism, most do not provide opportunities for teacher candidates to put theory into practice and engage with children on many of the tough equity issues that we face as a society. The reality is that children in America’s schools need and want to have these dialogues, and they deserve to have teachers that are equipped with the knowledge and skills to facilitate lessons and conversations about difference and equity.
When novice teachers can take risks and gain experience facilitating dialogue with children on issues of race, class, gender, and justice, they are more likely enter into the teaching profession with the confidence to teach multi-culturally and from culturally-responsive frameworks. For the youth in our schools, these lessons provide opportunities to think critically, engage in conversations around difference, and recognize their power to make their school and society more equitable and just.
As a parent with a young African American child in the Pullman Schools, it excites me to see her enthusiasm for having WSU students and multi-cultural books and lesson brought into her classroom. Perhaps the greatest outcome, however, is the significant lessening of the micro-aggressions that she and many students of color experience in school. As young children learn more explicitly about diversity, they also become more committed to ensuring that their school and class are inclusive.
Schools across the country, and in the State of Washington are becoming increasingly diverse, both culturally and linguistically, but the teaching profession is not diversifying at the same rate. Part of my mission is to ensure that teachers who graduate from WSU have a strong sense of understanding of what it means to be a culturally-responsive educator, and put those ideas and lessons into practice. When teachers understand multiculturalism as simply “good teaching,” it can then be implemented with all of the state and national standards that are required of them, and not as an “add on” to be done when time permits. Their approach to teaching, developing lessons, and creating community in their classrooms is one that facilitates greater justice. Their experiences in the program with the Pullman Schools are just the beginning. I know that my child, and many children across the state, are counting on them to continue to teach multiculturally.
