2106 Education Bldg.
email: brian.foley@csun.edu
phone: (818) 677-4005

Welcome to my home page. I work in the department of Secondary Education on issues of Educational Technology and Science Education. Education in this country - especially science education - is in need of significant improvement at all levels. Technology is only one of a number of means to this end, but it can be a powerful agent for change in schools and universities.

Courses

Use the links to the left to access the course websites.

Our book is available in paperback!

Constructing the Self in a Digital World (Learning inDoing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) 

Ongoing Projects
(if you are interested in working on these for independent study please let me know)

Computer Supportent Collaborative Science (CSCS)
Applying ideas from Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) to science classrooms is aided by online tools such as Google Docs. We are working with science teachers to demonstrate how using freely available tools can transform a science class into a thinking laboratory. Digital science classes are the future!

Computational Thinking and Science (aka Scatch Science)
Science can be understood at many levels and with different perspectives. By teaching visualization of science concepts, teachers can focus students attention on conceptual causes and effects. Use of visualizations in lecture and other presentations is valuable, but even more effective is when students construct visualizations themselves. We have started Scratch Science, a working group to look at the use of the software Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) to enable students to create their own visualizations.

Virtual Communities for Teachers
Many educational websites provide valuable links for teachers, but the Math Forum and TAPPED-In have demonstrated that active communities of teachers can provide far more support than static lists of resources. We are working to develop ways to best leverage the technology to support both teachers in the classroom and teachers in training. The RTCweb and Teacher Resource Database page are three examples we have developed. The Eduwiki provides a resource for teachers to share information - but we are currently putting together the next version of information sharing.