Let me introduce myself

I love technology! I am a “gadget hound,” and eagerly adopt the latest, if I can afford it. There definitely are a lot of cool toys to play with in the sciences, and that drew me into studying chemistry. Computers now give everyone the power to do a lot yourself: publish, compose art, simplify the tedious, and even perform sophisticated calculations. My background is wide-ranging from my career in pharmaceutical discovery. I first become an expert with Word to write reports that combined text with pictures (beautiful chemical structures). Early in my career I jumped at a job with a company in San Diego that was a pioneer for computer assisted drug design. I often helped develop and test software for visualizing molecules and proteins. It was great when I got the chance to teach new software to my fellow scientists.

I always enjoyed teaching. Mostly I love explaining things, especially after learning how they work. In graduate school for chemistry as a teaching assistant, I first taught freshman chemistry classes of about twenty to thirty. We even got videotaped and critiqued twice a semester. Later I got to teach chemistry lab classes. A few years later, during my first chemistry job, I also got the opportunity to teach lab classes at Stanford, even lecture to seventy students. During my research career, I treated chances to present as teaching moments—the opportunity to unveil individual discoveries to a new, wider audience. Now the economy has given me the chance to teach again. Just a few months ago I decided to pursue a teaching credential. I missed getting into the single subject cohort for this September, so I am taking classes, CSETs, and getting more classroom experience to apply for fall of 2011.

From this EDUC 422 class, I hope to learn multimedia technology relevant to teaching and reaching kids. I have two school-aged sons and see how they learn very differently from me, using videos and creating content! My younger son learned PowerPoint last year in third grade, and his presentation was flashier than any of mine! I realize that my experience using technology is different than what is needed for teaching and student engagement. I have already learned a lot of nifty tricks in my first two classes!

From my prior life. Observed binding mode of synthetic molecule in enzyme carbonic anhydrase II. From Vernier, W., Chong, W., Rewolinski, D., Greasley, S., Pauly, T., Shaw, M., et al. (2010). Thioether benzenesulfonamide inhibitors of carbonic anhydrases II and IV: Structure-based drug design, synthesis, and biological evaluation. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, 18(9), 3307-3319.

The following is a video of psychology professor Carol Dweck of Stanford discussing students that have a "growth" mindset better able to persist at a challenge versus those with a "fixed" mindset. I will no doubt write about this more in subsequent posts...