Sandra f. Sawaya
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  • Certification in College Teaching
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Developing Disciplinary Teaching Strategies
    • Creating Effective Learning Environments
    • Incorporating Technology in the Classroom
    • Understanding the University Context
    • Assessing Student Learning
    • Mentored Teaching Project

Looking back… #AnnualReview #MSUepet

By Sandra On April 23, 2013 · Add Comment
tv bars
As the Spring term is wrapping up, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the past two semesters – well… namely because of our upcoming annual reviews… (but not only). I feel that this year has been pivotal for me in terms of my scholarly work.  Looking back, I see many lesson learned, questions answered, mysteries solved, and missions accomplished. I presented at my first conference (better late than never [...]
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EPET @ SITE 2013

By Sandra On April 4, 2013 · Add Comment
EPET @ SITE 2013
To showcase the MSU EPET experience at this year’s SITE conference in New Orleans, I put together this video highlighting main events from our stay there.  Happy viewing! MSU EPET SITE 2013 experience from Sandra Sawaya on Vimeo.
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Simplexity

By Sandra On April 3, 2013 · Add Comment
simplexity
It was a quite a serendipitous and joyous moment when I came across this artwork at a local thrift store.  Other than having a keen interest in typography and fonts, this piece of art also spoke to the writer, researcher, and scientist that I consider myself to be.  Its message cannot be misinterpreted: keep a balance between the simple and complex. This experimentation in fonts on canvas is signed by its artist Dan Wallace.  After a [...]
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A Meaningful Aesthetic

By Sandra On April 2, 2013 · Add Comment
a meaninful aesthetic
I’m a big believer in data visualization.  Not only is a picture worth a 1,000 words, but a 1,000 data points at that.  My philosophy on creating an effective and affective visual display of information is that it has to be done in such a way that it could hang as a piece of art on your living room wall.  It has to have a meaningful aesthetic.  For example, take a look at the below [...]
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SITE 2013 Presentation

By Sandra On April 1, 2013 · Add Comment
SITE2013 pres
This year at the SITE conference in New Orleans, I presented a full paper on mobile learning.  You can read the full paper here. Learning Using Smartphones: Analyzing What Current Learners Think and Do Research on mobile learning has given much attention to (a) the affordances of mobility that mobile devices offer, and (b) how these devices are used in classroom learning.  Less attention has been paid to how learners perceive and use [...]
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ideaplay Chosen as #glassexplorers!

On March 28, 2013 By Sandra
ideaplay #glassexplorers
Here’s the official release from ideaplay.  
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#MSUEPET at #SITE2013

On March 25, 2013 By Sandra
SITE 2013
This year at SITE, the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology (EPET) program is really well represented.  Here’s the list of all #MSUEPET SITE2013-related presentations and activities! Tuesday, March 26th 10:15 – 12:30 (Bayside C): Symposium on Breaking Disciplinary Boundaries in 21st Century Learning: Creative Teaching with Digital Technologies: Part I & II. Punya Mishra, Chris Fahnoe, Danah Henriksen, Kristen Kereluik, Mike DeSchryver, Sean Leahy, Laura Terry, and Leigh Graves Wolf 12:30 PM [...]
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What Does Your Homepage Say about You?

On March 24, 2013 By Sandra
home
As the academic year is wrapping up, I’m gathering the pieces for my annual review.  One of the items on my list is updating my website. William and I were having a conversation about our website’s homepages.  As I was looking for a more “welcoming” and static lead in into my online academic portfolio, William was asking how come I don’t use my blog as my homepage.  In fact, he noted how others shared the [...]
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CEP 917 Wins Best Blended Course!

On March 24, 2013 By Sandra
Best blended course
A couple of days ago, it was announced that CEP 917 won the AT&T award for best blended course.  A few months ago, I (among others) was approached by the course instructors (Punya and Danah) and asked to reflect (in writing) on my experiences in the class.  Here is what I wrote… “The best way to sum up my experience as being a face-to-face learner in CEP 917 is a quote that [...]
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Transforming Literacies

On March 22, 2013 By Sandra
Sawaya&Skogsberg (2013).What is literacy.jpg
  I submitted the following to the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy‘s call for Literacy Lenses essays.  This post is a reflection on my experiences in Doug Hartman’s CEP 981 class — specifically regarding the synthesis projects we worked on in pairs. I am a doctoral student in Educational Technology at a large mid-western university currently enrolled in a class on Research in Literacy and Technology.  The course is centered around [...]
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Remind Me Again, Who’s Big Brother?

On March 13, 2013 By Sandra
The quantified self revolution
- [Ideaplay post] A focus in Doug Hartman’s Research on Literacy and Technology class (CEP 981) is on methodological tools for data collection.  As such when we met Monday night, Doug introduced us to Memoto - a lifeblogging tool that captures an image every 30 seconds. What does that mean?  What are the implications of such a tool?  Yes, the possibilities are endless.  Just imagine having bits and pieces of your life [...]
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EPET Wins Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology!

On March 1, 2013 By Sandra
AACTE
The EPET program wins the best practice award for the innovative use of technology awarded by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). You can watch Leigh Graves Wolf’s speech below as she accepts the award on behave of the EPET program at the 65th AACTE annual meeting in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 28, 2013:
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What Matchbox 20 Can Tell Us About Synchronous Hybrid Learning

On February 20, 2013 By Sandra
Rob Thomas: "I'm listening?  What about synchronous hybrid learning?"
 - [Ideaplay post] This past Saturday, I had the chance to go see Matchbox 20 perform live.  Now, I can almost hear you wondering: How can attending a concert give thoughts to hybrid learning?  Did I peak your interests yet?  Let me walk you through my thoughts that night. I had purchased good seats for the show and was excited to watch the performance, take a few pictures, some video – the usual. [...]
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The Rules of Assistantships

On January 29, 2013 By Sandra
Welcome to EPET club
- [Ideaplay post] Welcome to EPET Club. The first task in EPET Club is to manage assistantships. The first rule of assistantships is:  you talk to your advisor. The second rule of assistantships is:  you TALK to your advisor! Third rule of assistantships:  if (a) someone has a specific area of expertise, (b) attends seminars that are put on by the graduate school or by the Faculty and Organizational Development office, (c) wants a [...]
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What is Technology?

On January 22, 2013 By Sandra
A response to the question of: "What is technology?"
- [Ideaplay post] Some weeks ago in my Literacy and Technology class, Dr. Doug Hartman asked us the following question: “What is technology?” I’ve taken more than my share of ed tech classes so I decided to take a stroll down memory lane and find an answer this question.  As I foraged through the forest of information that has grown from seeds over the past three and a half years, I slowly started to realise [...]
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Bibli-motional Experience

On December 14, 2012 By Sandra
Bibli-motional
For my Media, Design and Knowledge class (CEP 917), we had to work on an emotional map.  Basically, we had to engage in an activity and jot down our emotional experiences. This here emotional map showcases my experience of going to the library to do some work. The map shows the major favourable and unfavourable “touch points”.
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The Creative Process

On November 30, 2012 By Sandra
radio story
For my Media, Design and Knowledge class (CEP 917), we had to create a short radio story with the theme of “Unpacking the creative process”. This here is a podcast about the design process of 3 architects, a jewelry designer, and a tattoo artist. This also reflects the design process that we as a team went through as we were putting together this podcast. Credits: Andy Driska, Chris Fahnoe, Angie Johnson, and Sandra [...]
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Mighty Skeuomorphin’ Design Element!

On November 2, 2012 By Sandra
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
This post is a reflection on Punya’s blog post about skeuomorphism. I read that post after having read Bruce and Pool (the theme for this week’s readings is Design in Society) and it seems that maybe a reason for skeuomorphism is related to the the concept of innovation and its introduction into society. I haven’t read beyond the wikipedia article about skeuomorphism but it seemed to me that the reason for this design [...]
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Skin Diaries: People and their First Tattoo

On October 31, 2012 By Sandra
Skin Diaries
For my Media, Design and Knowledge class (CEP 917), we had to design a photoessay that explores the relationship between individuals and an artifact.  I chose to take pictures of people’s first tattoo.  Here’s the link to my photoessay.  
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Cognition and Affect

On October 29, 2012 By Sandra
Cognition and affect
This is a reflection on Norman’s piece from Emotion and Design. I’ve read this piece before, however, upon reading this again during a stressful time of the semester, I noticed how much of what Norman wrote about explain my behavior during this period. I have this need to order the environment around me whenever I am under stress – typically school-related stress (exams, a major project, etc…). Whenever I thought about this habit, I just [...]
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The Golden Ratio

On October 21, 2012 By Sandra
Fibonacci
This post is related to the Mishra, Henrikson, and the Deep-Play Research Group reading for this week specifically about being in-disciplined and the contradiction in creativity “in which creativity requires deep disciplinary knowledge and also the ability to break disciplinary boundaries and transfer ideas across other subject matters”. This reading reminded me of the the strong relationship between mathematics art and what is considered aesthetic: the golden ratio in architecture, painting, nature, rule [...]
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View of Competence

On October 14, 2012 By Sandra
?
For class this week, we had to read Csik., Sternberg, and Mishra&Koehler. The theme for this week was individual creativity: what is it, how does it develop. The main take-aways were (a) that creativity is found in the “domain, field, and the individual”, and (b) that something creative is “novel, effective, and whole”. These readings made me think back to my CEP 902 class with Jack Smith “Psychology of learning school subjects”. For his class [...]
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OpenSource Dyslexia Font

On October 7, 2012 By Sandra
OpenSource dyslexia font
I’m a font fan. I came across this article about a dyslexic programmer who developed a font that supposedly helps people with dyslexia read better and prevents switching letters around. I find this pretty cool and wanted to share.
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Facebook and Everyday Objects

On October 5, 2012 By Sandra
Facebook and everyday things
I saw this video on Facebook this morning with the caption: “We honor the everyday things that people make to get together and connect.” The video (to celebrate Facebook reaching 1 million users) compares chairs (mainly), bridges, doorbells, airplanes to Facebook. These artifacts were developed to bring people closer together and share their stories. In that sense – according to Csikszentmihalyi, – all these objects have the same psychic energy which is [...]
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Going Minimal

On September 15, 2012 By Sandra
Going minimal
This is a reflection on Punya’s post entitled “Minimalism / 917 on my mind”. One of my favourite questions to ask/answer is: “if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what would you bring with you?” Let’s add to that question the fact that all your objects need to be able to fit in a backpack. What would I bring? Should I bring things of personal value? Things [...]
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What Life Under the Sea Can Tell Me About Design

On September 5, 2012 By Sandra
Jellyfish 2
I visited the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum for the first (and definitely not last) time yesterday (September 5th). I was in awe of the world that exists beneath our ocean floors. So vibrant… The jellyfish exhibit struck me the most. They have no brains, blood, or bones and move in a singular, propelling motion that left me inadvertently staring at some of their tanks for minutes on end. They are so simple, yet beautiful [...]
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  • My name is Sandra Sawaya. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. I am the combined effort of everyone and everything I’ve every known. This is my portfolio as a scholar.

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[email] sawayasa@msu.edu
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