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Tech Skills

In my previous career in commercial web development, I built front-end processes for successful large-scale e-commerce sites using Adobe Creative Suite, HTML, CSS, web analytics, and usability data for ten years. This foundation enabled me to go on to co-develop educational resource intranet sites for three different educational entities (MTCS, Daystar Academy and Adams 14 District), and to flourish in multiple learning management systems, including Black Board and Google Classroom.

Tech Skills

  • Learning Management Systems (LMS)
  • CSS / HTML
  • Graphic Design
  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Web Analytics | User Experience
  • Google Suite | Microsoft Office

 

Master’s Thesis

I invite you to read my master’s thesis on SLIFE writing, which has been downloaded and read over 300 times all over the world.

Abstract

Fossenbell, B.  Visual Support in Discourse Writing for Students With Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (2016)

The research question addressed in this project was: for Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE), how can a series of integrated graphic organizers, implemented in an environment informed by the Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm (MALP), improve students’ use of result and exemplification discourse connectors in developing written arguments? The motivating factor for this capstone was the researcher’s observations of the struggles SLIFE encounter in moving from sentence-level to discourse-level writing proficiency.  The action research integrated qualities of MALP, based on the work of DeCapua and Marshall, with an interrelated series of graphic organizers, influenced by Gibbons, in an attempt to help SLIFE improve their use of result and exemplification discourse connectors in argument essays. The study found that the combination helped students organize their thoughts, align their reasons and examples, and increase their use of the target language.

Launching of the Daystar Bridge Program

Daystar Academy is a strong bilingual immersion program that develops world citizens by embracing Chinese and Western culture through its integrated education model. Daystar students strive for distinction in comprehensive Chinese and English studies, creative thinking and character development for the purpose of serving the community at large.  In short, Daystar students are highly bicultural and biliterate to a degree few people ever achieve.

While the success rate is high, one of the challenges in such a time-intensive model is finding opportunities to implement lengthier interventions for students who need additional interactions with academic English concepts and content.  In traditional English-only schools, this burden is distributed throughout the school day or is lessened by students being surrounded by English in the world around them.  In contrast, our ELLs (who make up 70% of the student body) only receive 12 hours of instruction a week and have very little exposure to English in their lives outside of school.

In order to create additional opportunities for these students, a small team of us were able to do a needs assessment of the students and parents and reach out into the larger Beijing community to find partners who could provide extra support aligned with our mission and curriculum.  After interviewing several candidates, we settled on the Learning Tree. Working together with our two curriculum teams, we have been able to facilitate the creation of the Daystar Bridge Program.  As it is aligned with our learner outcomes, program of inquiry and standards, and given that there are pathways established for teachers to share feedback and data, students have been able to receive extra targeted support.  We’ve even been able launch parent education sessions to help parents support students at home.  Results have been fantastic.  Reading and writing scores are improving quickly and students and parents alike are reporting higher levels of understanding and enjoyment in learning.

 

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