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.

AERA 2008:

Students' Attitudes Towards Science in Classes using Hands-on and Textbook based Curricula. Foley & McPhee

SIG LS/ATL Sessions

AERA Special Interest Group for Advanced Technology for Learning

Algebra Learning Network

Courses

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

Previous Course Pages

• SED 514 - Fall 06
• SED 646 - Fall 06
• SED 690 - Spring 06
• SED 618 - Fall 05
• SED 690 - Fall 05
• SED 618 - Spring 05

AERA 2008 Papers

Students' Attitudes Towards Science In Classes Using Hands-On Or Textbook Based Curriculum (coming soon)
Foley & McPhee

Ongoing Projects

I have three areas of educational technology that I am working on. I am always looking for good students (and programmers) to assist:

Virtual Communities for Teachers - AlgebraLearningNet
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. For this we use Moodle and Wiki pages for our classes in the masters program.The Algebra Learning Network (ALN: edutech.csun.edu/aln) is our first attempt at a site for inservice teachers. Aimed specifically at algebra teachers the site tried to be a more targeted version of the Teacher networking than you find on Yahoo Teacher or even TAPPED-In. Future sites will focus on other topics (e.g. Physics teachers, world history, PE).

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) for Education
Technology originally developed for online computer games has great potential to support virtual learning environments. One of the most successful MUVEs for education, Whyville (www.whyville.net), has thousands of young people log on every day to chat, play and learn about science in a totally informal and virtual environment. We are working to better understand this technology and develop new uses.

Visualization of Science Concepts
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 are looking at the effect of simple drawing activities as well as computer visualization and programming as ways to visualize students' thinking in science.

Upcoming Events/Projects

The Algebra Learning Net is up and running. We are adding content and functionality this fall and will begin publicising it in the spring. A small working group meets every other week.