About Me

I live in Ashland, OR where I enjoy tormenting my teenage daughter with dad jokes and my wife with husband jokes! Although we live in the Pacific NW and imagine ourselves as avid backpackers, skilled campers, and all around outdoorsy flannel-ista beardmen, we all really just enjoy staying clean-shaven at home with a good book, Netflix series, or video game; I do make it outside for the occasional run or some tennis with my spouse. At around dinnertime I'm usually cooking and really enjoy making cajun food; I've also developed a mean Superbowl chili through many iterations and years of Boston sports victories.Random things I've enjoyed this past year: The Murderbot Diaries by Margaret Wells, Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan, Eurovision Song Contest: Story of Fire Saga on Netflix, and White Chocolate Yuzu Berliner Style Donuts at Fills Donuts in Portland, OR.Oh, and I take care of a cat named Lilly! Who's my good girl? Hey! Get off my keyboaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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Introduction | Resources | Research

My evolution as a CS Instructor started with my time in industry, which led into the classroom, and finally into graduate school.

Introduction | Resources | Research

A set of resources that I've found, but have not necessarily used yet.

CSinSF.org
A full PK-12 scope and sequence, and various levels of curriculum. An incredible resource.

CSTeachingTips.org
Complied by Coleen Lewis who's currently at University of Illinois, CS Teaching Tips are best digested one byte at a time.

ScratchEd
A set of great resources for learning and teaching with Scratch.

Introduction | Resources | Research

Before You Look at Anything Else...
If due to some strange sequence of events you ended up here before visiting Professor Amy Ko's Computing Education Research FAQ, read that first. It contains advice, resources, and lists galore for anybody interested in CS Ed. It's authoritative in the sense that there's no other resource out there like it.

Pedagogical Strategies

The following research is immediately applicable to the CS classroom. I've had success with Use Modify Create in summer python coding camp for middle schoolers, but have not had the opportunity to integrate the other research into the K-8 classroom due to the coincidence of the publications with the pandemic.

Introduction | Resources | Research | Projects

By happenstance, my interest in computational thinking research began at the same time as I started teaching in 2015. In researching computational thinking, I was impressed by how concepts like decomposition and algorithms could be used outside of CS to further student achievement. They're concepts that I wished I had been introduced to when I was a young student!Since then, I've seen how CT plays a role in teacher pedagogy and student understanding, and I'm eager to see and contribute to continued advances in the field.

Introduction | Resources | Research | Projects

Introduction | Resources | Research | Projects

Introduction | Resources | Research | Projects

Here are some details on the CT research projects I've been a part of:

Introduction | Reflections | Showcase  | Annotated Transcript

The award-winning Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) online program at Michigan State University is recognized as one of the nation's top programs in educational technology. I matriculated in the fall of 2019 with the intention of learning educational theory and graduated in the summer of 2021 having been introduced to much more, from video production to design thinking, from multiple new programming tools to online teaching. I was challenged to overcome aversion to new technology and to understand and address inequity in computer science education. Most significantly, the educational designers at the MAET practiced what they taught: social constructivism, 21st Century learning, and care and empathy for the learner. I would have stayed in the program longer if it wasn't considered awkward!

Introduction | Reflections | Showcase  | Annotated Transcript

A trio of essays.

Introduction | Reflections | Showcase  | Annotated Transcript

Technological Fluency

Issues in Computer Science Education

Help!

Welcome to my portfolio and CV website! Click around the Home page to navigate to the About Me, CS Education, CT Research, Graduate Work, Gallery, or Contact Me pages. Or use the sitemap below to access any page and subpage.

Summary | Employment  | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

* remote from home starting 2009

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

Summary | Employment | Education | PDF

To Learn. To Teach. To Research.

In the fall of 2019, I started my master's program with three goals:

Two years later when I finished my master's, those three goals...were still my goals.It's not that I failed to achieve my goals or that my program failed to meet my needs. During my time in the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) online program at Michigan State University, I developed a strong foundation in educational theory, acquired knowledge about pedagogy in general as well as in CS, and contributed to research in computational thinking. After graduating with a master's, I chose to make my new goals essentially the same as my old ones, but with one small change.

Learn Educational Theory

My original goal was to find answers to questions such as

What theory can I use as the basis for my teaching?

But I quickly found many new or unanswered questions in a field that was constantly evolving:

How can schools address inequity in the classroom and broaden participation in CS?

The MAET helped me understand answers in education could not be given through direct instruction. I would need to develop my own answers according to my own needs and unique context through a process of research, analysis, design, implementation, and reflection. Nor would I ever have all the answers. Learning in education would not end upon completion of my master's; it would be a life-long process.

Teach AP Computer Science

While teaching CS in the high school was the most immediately achievable of my three goals, my intent was simply to be in the classroom to put into practice what I learned. As circumstances would have it, I obtained a position teaching the second section of CS1 at the local university, pending sufficient enrollment. Immediate goal achieved, I would be in a position where I could actively develop my practice. But, logically, as a corollary to my first goal, which had developed into a life-long engagement with new developments in educational theory, it followed that my second goal be modified as an ongoing goal too, as I would need to keep implementing the educational theory I would be life-long learning.

Explore Research and Academia

As for research, my goal was to determine whether to pursue a PhD. During the MAET, I was lucky to experience early success, not just in having contributed to an accepted conference paper, but in finding colleagues I liked, in uncovering research questions that piqued my interest, and in discovering camaraderie among other CS Ed graduate students. I found myself enjoying the people, the process, and the results of research, and I hope to continue doing so in a PhD program. But, I would need to continue exploring research and academia, this time more deeply as a potential PhD student.

I have the same goals as before. Essentially,

But I now possess a clearer understanding of the amount of time dedication to these goals demand. I am making a life-long commitment to not just finding answers in education, but new questions as well, in a never ending and utlimately rewarding cycle of struggle, discovery, and progress.

The Best I Can With the Time I Have | PDF

A conversation inside my head about future learning, a PhD, and work-life balance.

Introduction | Reflections | Showcase  | Annotated Transcript

Fall 2019

Spring 2020

Summer 2020

Fall 2020

Spring 2021

Summer 2021

Intro | Constructivism  | Constructionism | UDL | Conclusion | Printable

From Imposter to Educator

IntroductionThe online Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University was the best learning experience I've ever had. Courses in the MAET were designed based on the very theory and practice we studied, theories and practices that were expertly and consistently employed over my two years in the program and served as exemplary models for our own teaching practice: constructivism leading to learning through a variety of exploration, reflection, and feedback; constructionism leading to learning, failing, and sharing with 21st century technology tools; and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) leading to equitable, situated, and customized learning experiences. Aside from the sheer volume of learning I experienced, I also developed a strong identify as an educator based on an essential set of values reinforced throughout the program: empathy for my students, collaboration with my peers, and life-long learning.

Intro | Constructivism | Constructionism | UDL | Conclusion

My Pre-existing KnowledgeIn retrospect, that I was invited to teach computer science (CS) in K-8 with my lack of any pedagogical knowledge is indicative of the dearth of teachers trained to teach CS, but I think the principal who hired me knew at the very least I was capable of giving students a hands-on computer science lab experience. I remember preparing a lot of demonstrations and lectures, a lot of trying to recreate what I experienced as a student, maybe the occasional worksheet or practice set, and a very large dose of naive optimism that what I prepared would contribute to student learning. Using my MAET training as a lens to examine my attempt at teaching CS to K-8 students, here is what I now understand: I was offering students a mix of modeling, lecture, and constructionist opportunities to essentially learn computer science on their own. That was the good. The bad was that I was relying on educational strategies that were over twenty-five years old from when I was last a student in the classroom, was perpetuating inequitable practices that have led to the long lack of diversity in the technology industry, and never truly assessed my students' understanding. It was no wonder that by the end of my fifth year of part-time teaching that my student population had turned predominantly male.Contructivism
The ideas in theory of learning I gravitated quickly to were constructivist in nature: that students enter the classroom with pre-existing knowledge with which they use to assimilate, accommodate, or reject information. Thus, any understanding that they may gain depends on what they know beforehand, leading either to clarity, or misconceptions. My role as a teacher wasn't simply to present knowledge, or provide learning opportunities, but it was to assess student understanding early and often so I could make instructional decisions based on student needs. I experienced this firsthand in the MAET as courses employed strategies to elicit the pre-assumptions we started with, either broadly, simply by asking us what our background was and what we hoped to learn, or in a more targeted fashion, by asking us at the very beginning of the course to write down our early thoughts about our theory of learning or about how we use assessment in our classroom.The Need for Assessment
Assessment of all types as a socio-constructivist and metacognitive strategy was another aspect of educational theory that I immediately saw the need for in my practice: ongoing formative assessment so both student and teacher understand how much has been learned and how much needs to be learned; summative assessment to evaluate the final quality of teaching and learning; and self-reflection so that students develop important evaluative skills regarding their own work and learning. My computer science classes had relied on completion of programming assignments and debugging to serve as automatic forms of feedback. Feedback consisting solely of bugs and error messages, however, simply highlight what is wrong with the task, and do nothing to help students understand the processes or misconceptions that may have led to those bugs and errors. To bring assessment into my classroom, I would need my students to begin explaining their reasoning behind their code, and I would need to provide feedback that identified errors in conception or process. In the MAET, the instructive and encouraging feedback I received from my instructors and the opportunity to revise my work were some of things I noticed right away as a student whose last educational experience was over twenty years ago. I remember thinking things are different now...and better.

Intro | Constructivism | Constructionism | UDL | Conclusion

Struggle with Constructionism
As eager as I was to learn educational theory, I struggled to accept constructionism, even though it was ironically the predominant way that I had been teaching prior to my enrollment in the MAET program. I had as a young child engaged in a handful of fruitless learning experiences where tools did not contribute to my learning. My use of LEGOs as a child is perhaps a prime example: I simply followed instructions to complete whatever was depicted on the box and never learned to build anything on my own; a handful of LEGOs sans instructions were useless to me. Based on experiences like those, I spent most of my time in the MAET program convinced that constructionism, and its modern day manifestation, makerspaces, could not lead to any significant understanding.Resolution
It was only upon summative reflection on my learning in the MAET did I realize that UDL—which I had coincidentally struggled with as well—a framework which I had associated only with providing a variety of tangible classroom methods and strategies, could also be applied to the theoretical basis for designing learning experiences. Constructionism would simply be another arrow in my quiver of assorted theories to use in the classroom that I might not personally like, but which UDL would insist I provide it for my students. Upon reflection, I begrudgingly admit that I benefited from constructionist opportunities in the MAET program: the emphasis on using technology like Flipgrid or Loom to complete assignments helped me to gradually develop skills to communicate visually rather than merely through text. But constructionist learning in the MAET was not a smooth process; I failed multiple times throughout the program in using technology to complete assignments...but that may have been one of the points of constructionist learning all along! As I write this now, I realize the tightrope that MAET course designers walked between encouraging students to try new technology and risking irreversible failure. The key must have been to prepare a response to student failure that was both empathetic and highlighted lessons learned through failure.

Intro | Constructivism | Constructionism | UDL | Conclusion

A More Expert WayMy reconciliation with constructionism is connected to a broader idea: that novice teachers use their own experiences and preferences as a basis for their instructional design, but expert teachers know that their own experiences as students are but one of many possible experiences of learning and that a classroom of students will present with a variety of needs that will need to be fulfilled in a variety of ways. The novice teacher looks to themselves for inspiration, whereas expert teachers empathize with their students to identify learning needs and seeks to understand the context in which they live.UDL in CS Ed
In CS education, empathy and context is essential to understanding and addressing inequity, and in forcing the field to develop more constructivist strategies to balance its historically constructionist tendencies, exhibited by CS professors expecting students to debug code on their own because that's what they did as students. But, students who excel in constructionist CS classes are those who have had the privilege of previous constructionist experiences, either because they had a parent who shared their own CS knowledge, or because they had enough wealth to access a personal computer at home and the time to explore computer programming. In other words, students privileged in CS have already had many opportunities to fail and learn from their failures. Inequity in CS promotes those who have had pre-failure opportunities and leaves behind those who are simply having their first chance to fail. UDL, applied to the CS classroom, would provide both early failure opportunities and advanced failure opportunities, and provide constructivist experiences for those who will experience early failure to help develop understanding more intentionally and more quickly. This is an admittedly strange perspective on CS education, but failure through constructionist experiences exists at all stages of CS learning, from novice to expert, so much so that failure needs to be addressed in advance by educational designers and scaffolded for those new to the field.UDL in the MAET
I was self-conscious as an older, male, student who was less experienced in both education and technology in the MAET program. And yet, after two years I felt like I belonged in the program. That, despite the majority of enrollees being classroom teachers at the elementary or high school level, the course content and assignments still applied to my specific context as a technology-adverse CS instructor with no prior teacher training. How could that have even been possible? Through deliberate application of UDL principles by course designers who recognized where specific course content was applicable across all contexts, like during exploration of educational theory, and recognized where course content would need to become more generalized, so that it, too, could be applied across all contexts, like for assignments meant to be applied to each enrollee's professional context. There were certainly some consequences to providing generalized assignment requirements, like more uncertainty about what exactly needed to be done, but communication with instructors was encouraged and quickly lead to clarity. To address inequity in how much each student knew about educational theory, additional resources were provided for those who felt the need for additional information. And to address varying levels of experience with technology, an assortment of technology options were provided with which to complete assignments.

Intro | Constructivism  | Constructionism  | UDL |  Conclusion

Educator Identity
My self-consciousness as a clueless instructor manifested in other ways in my teaching practice before starting the MAET program: I avoided seeking out peers for help and to offer help. I had neither desire to reveal how little I knew nor believed I had any answers worth sharing with others. But, because of the MAET program, repeated engagement with social media through twitter led to my attendance in local and national Computer Science Teachers Association conferences and participation in the #CSEdResearchBookClub with graduate students who were closer to my age than typical. The #CSEdResearchBookClub was especially helpful in preparing me in specific ways for future forays into academia, preparation that I would have missed out on had I remained the insular, lonesome older CS instructor.Thoughts on Educational Technology
Despite my preconceptions of educational technology being an unnecessary marriage between unrelated topics and of technology as an unnecessary luxury in the classroom, I learned that technology is inseparable from education in two distinct ways: that new technology, if created and evaluated correctly, can facilitate learning in new and improved ways; and that technology incorporated into the classroom can prepare students to use or adopt new technologies themselves after they graduate. Between 2019 and 2021 when I was enrolled in the MAET, the online MAET program became a glaringly obvious case in point: being an online student in 2019 helped prepare me to teach online during the coronavirus pandemic that started in 2020. Because I had already failed with technology in myriad ways in the MAET program, I was prepared for the failures I would encounter in a most difficult and trying year.Conclusion
My experience in the MAET program was overwhelmingly positive, full of learning experiences based on the very theories that we studied, and applicable to all learning contexts and teacher abilities, even to that of a part time CS instructor with no teacher training. Out of place as an older male enrollee, the MAET program proved also to be the inclusive learning environment that it encouraged us to create. Feeling like an imposter when I started, I now leave as an educator--not merely because of how much or what I know, but also because of the adoption of values that define educators: as those who empathize with students, seek to learn with peers, and possess an eagerness and fearlessness for new educational theory and technology respectively. These are high expectations the MAET program has set for its students, but that is just another example of the MAET practicing what they preach.

IntroductionThe online Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University was the best learning experience I've ever had. Courses in the MAET were designed based on the very theory and practice we studied, theories and practices that were expertly and consistently employed over my two years in the program and served as exemplary models for our own teaching practice: constructivism leading to learning through a variety of exploration, reflection, and feedback; constructionism leading to learning, failing, and sharing with 21st century technology tools; and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) leading to equitable, situated, and customized learning experiences. Aside from the sheer volume of learning I experienced, I also developed a strong identify as an educator based on an essential set of values reinforced throughout the program: empathy for my students, collaboration with my peers, and life-long learning.

Contructivism
In retrospect, that I was invited to teach computer science (CS) in K-8 with my lack of any pedagogical knowledge is indicative of the dearth of teachers trained to teach CS, but I think the principal who hired me knew at the very least I was capable of giving students a hands-on computer science lab experience. I remember preparing a lot of demonstrations and lectures, a lot of trying to recreate what I experienced as a student, maybe the occasional worksheet or practice set, and a very large dose of naive optimism that what I prepared would contribute to student learning. Using my MAET training as a lens to examine my attempt at teaching CS to K-8 students, here is what I now understand: I was offering students a mix of modeling, lecture, and constructionist opportunities to essentially learn computer science on their own. That was the good. The bad was that I was relying on educational strategies that were over twenty-five years old from when I was last a student in the classroom, was perpetuating inequitable practices that have led to the long lack of diversity in the technology industry, and never truly assessed my students' understanding. It was no wonder that by the end of my fifth year of part-time teaching that my student population had turned predominantly male.The ideas in theory of learning I gravitated quickly to were constructivist in nature: that students enter the classroom with pre-existing knowledge with which they use to assimilate, accommodate, or reject information. Thus, any understanding that they may gain depends on what they know beforehand, leading either to clarity, or misconceptions. My role as a teacher wasn't simply to present knowledge, or provide learning opportunities, but it was to assess student understanding early and often so I could make instructional decisions based on student needs. I experienced this firsthand in the MAET as courses employed strategies to elicit the pre-assumptions we started with, either broadly, simply by asking us what our background was and what we hoped to learn, or in a more targeted fashion, by asking us at the very beginning of the course to write down our early thoughts about our theory of learning or about how we use assessment in our classroom.Assessment of all types as a socio-constructivist and metacognitive strategy was another aspect of educational theory that I immediately saw the need for in my practice: ongoing formative assessment so both student and teacher understand how much has been learned and how much needs to be learned; summative assessment to evaluate the final quality of teaching and learning; and self-reflection so that students develop important evaluative skills regarding their own work and learning. My computer science classes had relied on completion of programming assignments and debugging to serve as automatic forms of feedback. Feedback consisting solely of bugs and error messages, however, simply highlight what is wrong with the task, and do nothing to help students understand the processes or misconceptions that may have led to those bugs and errors. To bring assessment into my classroom, I would need my students to begin explaining their reasoning behind their code, and I would need to provide feedback that identified errors in conception or process. In the MAET, the instructive and encouraging feedback I received from my instructors and the opportunity to revise my work were some of things I noticed right away as a student whose last educational experience was over twenty years ago. I remember thinking things are different now...and better.

Constructionism
As eager as I was to learn educational theory, I struggled to accept constructionism, even though it was ironically the predominant way that I had been teaching prior to my enrollment in the MAET program. I had as a young child engaged in a handful of fruitless learning experiences where tools did not contribute to my learning. My use of LEGOs as a child is perhaps a prime example: I simply followed instructions to complete whatever was depicted on the box and never learned to build anything on my own; a handful of LEGOs sans instructions were useless to me. Based on experiences like those, I spent most of my time in the MAET program convinced that constructionism, and its modern day manifestation, makerspaces, could not lead to any significant understanding.It was only upon summative reflection on my learning in the MAET did I realize that UDL—which I had coincidentally struggled with as well—a framework which I had associated only with providing a variety of tangible classroom methods and strategies, could also be applied to the theoretical basis for designing learning experiences. Constructionism would simply be another arrow in my quiver of assorted theories to use in the classroom that I might not personally like, but which UDL would insist I provide it for my students. Upon reflection, I begrudgingly admit that I benefited from constructionist opportunities in the MAET program: the emphasis on using technology like Flipgrid or Loom to complete assignments helped me to gradually develop skills to communicate visually rather than merely through text. But constructionist learning in the MAET was not a smooth process; I failed multiple times throughout the program in using technology to complete assignments...but that may have been one of the points of constructionist learning all along! As I write this now, I realize the tightrope that MAET course designers walked between encouraging students to try new technology and risking irreversible failure. The key must have been to prepare a response to student failure that was both empathetic and highlighted lessons learned through failure.

UDLMy reconciliation with constructionism is connected to a broader idea: that novice teachers use their own experiences and preferences as a basis for their instructional design, but expert teachers know that their own experiences as students are but one of many possible experiences of learning and that a classroom of students will present with a variety of needs that will need to be fulfilled in a variety of ways. The novice teacher looks to themselves for inspiration, whereas expert teachers empathize with their students to identify learning needs and seeks to understand the context in which they live.In CS education, empathy and context is essential to understanding and addressing inequity, and in forcing the field to develop more constructivist strategies to balance its historically constructionist tendencies, exhibited by CS professors expecting students to debug code on their own because that's what they did as students. But, students who excel in constructionist CS classes are those who have had the privilege of previous constructionist experiences, either because they had a parent who shared their own CS knowledge, or because they had enough wealth to access a personal computer at home and the time to explore computer programming. In other words, students privileged in CS have already had many opportunities to fail and learn from their failures. Inequity in CS promotes those who have had pre-failure opportunities and leaves behind those who are simply having their first chance to fail. UDL, applied to the CS classroom, would provide both early failure opportunities and advanced failure opportunities, and provide constructivist experiences for those who will experience early failure to help develop understanding more intentionally and more quickly. This is an admittedly strange perspective on CS education, but failure through constructionist experiences exists at all stages of CS learning, from novice to expert, so much so that failure needs to be addressed in advance by educational designers and scaffolded for those new to the field.I was self-conscious as an older, male, student who was less experienced in both education and technology in the MAET program. And yet, after two years I felt like I belonged in the program. That, despite the majority of enrollees being classroom teachers at the elementary or high school level, the course content and assignments still applied to my specific context as a technology-adverse CS instructor with no prior teacher training. How could that have even been possible? Through deliberate application of UDL principles by course designers who recognized where specific course content was applicable across all contexts, like during exploration of educational theory, and recognized where course content would need to become more generalized, so that it, too, could be applied across all contexts, like for assignments meant to be applied to each enrollee's professional context. There were certainly some consequences to providing generalized assignment requirements, like more uncertainty about what exactly needed to be done, but communication with instructors was encouraged and quickly lead to clarity. To address inequity in how much each student knew about educational theory, additional resources were provided for those who felt the need for additional information. And to address varying levels of experience with technology, an assortment of technology options were provided with which to complete assignments.

Other Thoughts
My self-consciousness as a clueless instructor manifested in other ways in my teaching practice before starting the MAET program: I avoided seeking out peers for help and to offer help. I had neither desire to reveal how little I knew nor believed I had any answers worth sharing with others. But, because of the MAET program, repeated engagement with social media through twitter led to my attendance in local and national Computer Science Teachers Association conferences and participation in the #CSEdResearchBookClub with graduate students who were closer to my age than typical. The #CSEdResearchBookClub was especially helpful in preparing me in specific ways for future forays into academia, preparation that I would have missed out on had I remained the insular, lonesome older CS instructor.Despite my preconceptions of educational technology being an unnecessary marriage between unrelated topics and of technology as an unnecessary luxury in the classroom, I learned that technology is inseparable from education in two distinct ways: that new technology, if created and evaluated correctly, can facilitate learning in new and improved ways; and that technology incorporated into the classroom can prepare students to use or adopt new technologies themselves after they graduate. Between 2019 and 2021 when I was enrolled in the MAET, the online MAET program became a glaringly obvious case in point: being an online student in 2019 helped prepare me to teach online during the coronavirus pandemic that started in 2020. Because I had already failed with technology in myriad ways in the MAET program, I was prepared for the failures I would encounter in a most difficult and trying year.Conclusion
My experience in the MAET program was overwhelmingly positive, full of learning experiences based on the very theories that we studied, and applicable to all learning contexts and teacher abilities, even to that of a part time CS instructor with no teacher training. Out of place as an older male enrollee, the MAET program proved also to be the inclusive learning environment that it encouraged us to create. Feeling like an imposter when I started, I now leave as an educator--not merely because of how much or what I know, but also because of the adoption of values that define educators: as those who empathize with students, seek to learn with peers, and possess an eagerness and fearlessness for new educational theory and technology respectively. These are high expectations the MAET program has set for its students, but that is just another example of the MAET practicing what they preach.