Linda Maguire is the second campus faculty member to be selected for the Mobile Media Pilot Project.
LINDA MAGUIRE TO USE iPOD TOUCH FOR EDUCATION COURSE
A coursework proposal by a second faculty member at Penn State New Kensington was accepted as a Mobile Media Pilot project for the spring 2012 semester.
Linda Maguire, instructor in education, will utilize the iPod Touch in her “Introduction to Teaching English to English Language Learners” next semester. Camille Downing, adjunct instructor in communications, will use the tablet in her upper-level "Public Relations Media and Methods" course. The two New Kensington campus educators were the only faculty selected from the six Penn State campuses in western Pennsylvania.
Also known as iTouch, the Wi-Fi mobile device is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, and handheld game console. Students in Maguire’s class will use the iTouch to conduct video interviews with international educators--faculty at the New Kensington campus and teachers at local public schools. The interviewees will discuss their experiences in acquiring a second language and interacting with others who speak another language or represent another culture.
“The course focuses on helping future teachers to understand and support culturally and linguistically diverse students,” said Maguire, who earned a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “The project will enable students to learn firsthand about the challenges faced by second language learners and the misunderstandings that can arise from cultural and language differences, especially in classroom situations.”
In addition, students will learn how to edit the interviews and share them with the class. Deborah Sillman, senior instructor in biology, who supervises Media Commons at the campus, will help the education majors with the technical aspects of the project.
“Technology has become a part of our students' daily lives,” said Maguire, a certified elementary and early childhood teacher and reading specialist. “I want to integrate the use of technology in my course to demonstrate its potential as a teaching and learning tool.”
Maguire graduated cum laude from IUP and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Elementary Education. Prior to joining the campus faculty, she was an assistant professor at Saint Vincent College where she taught courses in literacy development, content area reading, and early childhood curriculum and supervised student teaching experiences.
The Mobile Media Pilot project is an initiative by Penn State's Media Commons to integrate emerging mobile and social media into the current curriculum. Selecting courses where mobile media can make the most immediate and profound impact is the first step of the project. Media Commons is a University-wide initiative to provide a variety of services to help students, faculty and staff produce and publish multimedia projects.
For more on Downing’s project, visit http://www.nk.psu.edu/Information/News/44121.htm#NEWS44121 online.
For more about the media project, visit http://mediacommons.psu.edu/mobilemedia online.