Starting a New Blog

I have been daydreaming about starting a new blog for a while now.  Today is the day to begin with the introduction of Project Based Mom -- a place for me to share my thoughts on education, my hopes for project based learning, the projects I do with my kids, the projects I do myself,my interest in making and makerspaces, and cool things I hear about.

Education, particularly Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, is my passion.  I read about, think about, and do work supporting education, and have been wanting to have a place to collect and share my thoughts, so here it is.

Let's start with a bit about me:

I am the mother of two boys (kindergarten and second grade) and I really want them to be exposed to and have fun learning science, technology and engineering. As the focus in elementary school has moved towards math and reading, there is less time for science. So I am interested in ways to get both kids and adults inspired by and interested in math, science, and engineering.

I am a chemist, I got my Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College and I got my Ph.D. in Chemistry from Rice University. I have a wide-ranging research experience that includes work with x-ray crystallography, computer modelling or protein folding, and scanning tunelling microscopy of magnetic thin films.

I also have a Masters in Teaching from Rice University and am a credentialed science teacher. I taught high school chemistry and physics for ten years, including seven years in San Francisco Unified. I was recognized by the CA section of the American Chemical Society as the High School Chemistry Teacher of the Year in 2004.

I am a teacher educator. I was the director of the Cal Teach program at UC Berkeley to encourage science, math, and engineering students to pursue careers in math and science teaching. I designed and got the program approved as a credential program with the state of California, wrote grants to fund the program, and taught in the program. I also was the director of Math for America Berkeley, a program to provide professional and leadership development to successful math and science teachers in Bay Area public middle and high schools.

I am very excited about the potential of technology and data analytics to transform education. I am the co-founder of an education technology start-up, MySciHigh, which was prototyped and piloted during Summer 2012.

Overall, I am a teacher at heart who loves inspiring and empowering people to love learning and to develop an interest in science, technology, math, and engineering.