About Me: I was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. After finishing high school, I spent 2 years working and going to college in Scotland. I worked and lived at a residential school for students with multiple and severe disabilities and was part of a cohort of 10 attending classes at the University of Aberdeen. Then I moved to Montreal where I completed my B.A. in Fine Arts and Education. I decided to drive back to Vancouver from Montreal and ended up in San Francisco.
Once here, I began working on my Masters at SFSU in Special Education and worked for a number of charter schools. My vision is to provide access to general education curriculum for diverse learners through differentiation and strong instructional design. This developed into my current job, which is designing Blended Learning programs that prioritize the integration of technology to serve all students. The story of my work can be followed at blendmylearning.com.
Research Interests: I am in my 5th year of my PhD in Special Education with a designated emphasis in New Media. I am interested in exploring how the tools and technologies that are used in education influence learning, math learning (specifically algebra) with an emphasis on discovery-based approaches, and the overlap between these two areas of scholarship. Using a design-based research approach I am currently exploring alternative approaches to introducing learners to important aspects of algebraic cognition. My dissertation focuses on how technology-based learning activities can facilitate emergent algebraic understanding that is subjectively transparent, and proposes a new pedagogical approach called reverse scaffolding.