“TechPraxis 2009,†at MCLA
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) will hold an educational technology learning institute, “TechPraxis 2009,” this Thursday and Friday, March 19 and 20, in Murdock Hall conference room 218.Teachers in grades K-12, specialists, curriculum coordinators, support staff, principals and superintendents are encouraged to attend this two-day event, which will feature new information, hands-on experiences and discussions on how to develop, implement and support technology integration for use in curriculum, assessment and leadership within their schools.
Keynote speakers will be Cliff Konold, Ph.D., director of the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute at UMass-Amherst, and Linda Mabry, Ph.D., professor of educational psychology in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Washington State University-Vancouver.
A psychologist by training, Konold studies how people reason and learn about chance and data, and applies this research to the design of educational materials and software. He led the team that created the educational data-analysis tool TinkerPlots, which he continues to develop with grants from the National Science Foundation. For the past three years, he has worked in a public school in Holyoke, Mass., with students aged 12 to 14, to study how they learn.
Mabry began her career as a public elementary school teacher in a high-poverty, racially mixed elementary school in the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area. Wanting to provide more differentiated instruction, she began to study the use of technology in the classroom and earned a master's degree in computer-assisted instruction at the University of Illinois. Her doctoral degree specialized in research methodology, the evaluation of educational and social programs and the assessment of student achievement.
Mabry’s research has focused on teacher-developed and state-mandated systems for assessing student achievement, state and national educational accountability systems and their impact on teaching and learning, the administration of state performance assessments, the scoring of state performance assessments, the educational benefits of using lap-top computers at the elementary school level, high school literacy initiatives, reading tutoring, students at risk of academic failure, the preparation of teachers for bilingual classrooms and the contribution of children’s museums to public education.
In addition, MCLA President Mary K. Grant will speak to participants.
Registration is $25, which is waived for those associated with Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative schools. Substitute teacher cost reimbursement is available. For each day attended, participants will receive 7.5 Professional Development Points (PDPs. A certificate will be issued.
For more information, go to www.mcla.edu/About_MCLA/Community/bwli. To register online, to http://techpraxis2009.eventbrite.com.
