March 2015 e-Newsletter

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Brian Foley of the Department of Secondary Education has been selected as the 2015-2016 Michael D. Eisner College of Education Research Fellow for his project "Preparing Teachers to Use Technology in the Classroom." Dr. Foley joins a long and acclaimed list of MDECOE scholars who have been named Academic Affairs Research Fellow, including: Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Susan Auerbach, Connie White, Rachel Friedman Narr, Nathan Durdella, Julie Gainsburg, and Adele Eskeles Gottfried.

Please join us in congratulating Professor Foley on receiving this honor!

The What Really Works in Education conference is taking place on Friday, March 13 at the University Student Union here on campus. This all-day conference will focus on providing educators, parents, students, and administrators with practical strategies that really work for content instruction, behavior management, working with difficult parents (or teachers), inclusion, special populations, and much much more!
Get more information here
Register here

Four students in the English Education MA cohort have articles that have been, or will be published. Blake Bowers's "The Sounding of a Novel," Sarah Todd’s "Three Books Changed Everything," and Martha Rios's "Reading Beyond the Classroom" all appeared in the February 2015 issue of California English. Darren Masserman has a "conditional acceptance" from English Journal for "Lights, Camera, Write: How Scene Writing can Help Students Become Better Writers in Multiple Genres."

These articles were written and submitted for publication as a course assignment in SED 695C (Special Topics in English Language Arts: Composition/Language)

The Cal State Northridge Writing Project will offer a three hour workshop on "Demystifying the New ELD Standards" to help faculty and students alike understand the new standards and how they relate to the Common Core literacy and math standards and the NGSS.
See the flyer
Visit the Cal State Northridge Writing Project website

Two education-centric events have been in the news lately, with the Sundial reporting on a presentation by Dr. Edwin Ellis on new visual tools available for students of all grades and a presentation by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on his work regarding psychological flow. Dean Spagna introduced Dr. Ellis, and the MDECOE Alumni Association sponsored his event.

A partnership between SED Prof. Brian Foley and the LA Makerspace to help teach computer science to underserved communities received a grant from Google. The LA Makerspace Scratch Squad initiative was one of 37 organizations worldwide to receive a 2015 Google RISE award. They are recruiting and training teenagers to teach free programming classes to younger kids throughout Los Angeles.

Dr. John Reveles is heading up a team of faculty who are trying to improve teacher preparation within the college. A proposal to include computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in teacher training has been funded through the CSU New Generation of Educators program with funding from Bechtel Foundation. Read the CSU press release