TMA Portfolio for YS Carrasco

Portfolio submission for YS Carrasco for Texas Medical Association Ernest and Sarah Butler Awards for Excellence in Science Teaching

Adventures in Collaborative Learning - or - What a wild journey it has been

I would like to start off by thanking my team for working so hard and being diligent in their efforts to make this video project successful. I look forward to working with this team again if the need arises. Go Honeybadgers! The collaboration effort was quite extensive and the detail placed throughout is quite impressive. I considered including every detail on this page, but after review I will leave it to you, dear reader, to open the link for your perusal at a time that you see fit. Happy reading!

Convection...what?? - A short tutorial on convection currents

This is a collaborative video produced by the team of Michelle Ayala, Stephanie Carrasco, Travis Patocka, Hanna Pool and Dan Perez. This project was meant to be curriculum specific and student centered. The topic is one that students often have difficulty understanding but that is vital to a complete understanding of many Earth Science topics. Convection currents are found in ocean and wind currents, as forces that drive the weather, land and sea breezes and on a much larger scale, the weather. Helping students develop an understanding of convection currents on a small scale using real-life examples then helps them to apply the concept on a much larger, global scale.

Web Conference Reflections

I have participated in several of the web conferences for Educational Technology and Leadership for Lamar University. It has been an interesting experience to say the least. What is incredible is the ability for people all across the nation to come together to discuss questions and apprehensions in real-time. I was concerned that being in an on-line collaborative would be difficult, but having the opportunity to discuss concerns was definitely a boon. The web conference allowed me to understand the concerns of others and to discover that I wasn't the only one with these trepidations. It was also interesting to find that I was often able to answer questions that others had regarding work or upcoming deadlines. This reinforced my confidence in the direction I was moving and supported the work that our group was doing. Web conferencing can be intimidating due to the fact that you are face-to-face with people you really don't know, but the fact that you are working to a common goal is refreshing. I also enjoy the fact that web conference sessions are recorded. If I am not able to attend a conference, then I can review the recording and learn what I need to from the session, as long as someone else asked the questions that I had. Most of the time, that is the case.

Audacity Vodcast

Click on the image below to view my Vodcast for using Audacity's Envelope Tool