Author Archives: Alex C. Pan

About Alex C. Pan

Dr. Alex C. Pan was born in Taiwan and received his master and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is currently an associate professor at The College of New Jersey, where he teaches a broad spectrum of courses in subjects ranging from future teacher development to the impact of globalization. For over twenty years he has collaborated with public school programs and advised elementary and early childhood student teachers. He has published dozens of articles and given numerous talks and workshops on the topics of globalization, education, and technology-enhanced instruction. Most recently he has focused on teacher’s action research as well as the economic and cultural impact of globalization.

Getting kids under control

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

Lately I’ve been reading many different resources about class management, working with AD/HDs & OCD’s, and parenting the strong-willed kids. To put things on the practical perspectives, I was reminded of many incidents of failed cases of managing kids. To … Continue reading →

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Choices and Decisions in Teaching – Free Appropriate Public Education

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

What kind of students falls on the top priority list when teachers plan for teaching? What is our primary goal for teaching students? In the highest priority, do we want to produce the high-caliber super smart students, attend to the … Continue reading →

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Liability questions to ponder

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

Heard in the news the following stories. I am wondering about the liability issues. A baker refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because he doesn’t believe in gay marriage. He was threatened to be sued. Another … Continue reading →

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Proposing teaching excellence projects

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

I am proposing an idea to encourage our teacher candidates to engage in the teaching excellence projects. This semester, we are piloting this idea with a few junior practicum students. We’d encourage teacher candidates to come up with good ideas … Continue reading →

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Getting to Know You

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Alex C. Pan

Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you, Getting to hope you like me. -Lyrics from the movie “The King and I” (Check out the following link to see Marie Osmond as Anna in … Continue reading →

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Learning Theories

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Alex C. Pan

Professor (P): “Now you have started teaching lessons and working with students; let me ask you which learning theories you truly believe in.” Student Teacher (ST): “Hmmm…. I’ll need to think about the learning theories a little further.” P: “Check … Continue reading →

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Teaching math concepts and procedures

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Alex C. Pan

I observed a very interesting but challenging lesson on the missing numbers with addition and subtraction for the first graders. It is more of an application task that requires students to use their basic math skills to solve the problems … Continue reading →

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Simple Scrambled Word Games

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Alex C. Pan

Here are a few 5-letter scrambled words. Can you guess what they are as fast as you can? Let’s have a contest to see who the champion might be . OSHUE IWTER CPAEL AIRNY LIDSE AREPP ATEMS NOUDS CESOR RISFT … Continue reading →

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Thoughts on Portfolio

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Alex C. Pan

The Portfolio, especially electronic portfolio has been popular while the Web development tools advanced and became readily available for the general public. In our program, we always encourage students to develop good portfolios for their future careers. Here are some … Continue reading →

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Creating a learning community with newsletters

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Alex C. Pan

During this past semester, I required my students to work in small teams to generate bi-weekly newsletters for our class. The newsletters are at least four pages long. Students became creative to explore possible contents, including what they had learned … Continue reading →

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