Walsh Biography

Teaching Experience and Authoring Projects

Thomas Walsh Jr. has been a teacher for almost four decades with service primarily at the elementary level with the Ames Community Schools (ACS).  Elementary teaching included experience in grades 2 - 4 at the Belmond Community Schools and regular grade three classrooms in the ACS.  Additional teaching opportunities involved teaching conversational English at a trilingual Japanese school in Costa Rica and a private school in Chile during sabbatical leaves from ACS.  In 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014 he provided staff development training in teaching strategies and conversational English at multiple-faith Pare dioceses schools in Tanzania, Africa.  This training program involved teaching secondary teachers, with support from the Bethesda Tanzania (BTZ) ministry organization, Strategies to Promote English Language Conversation in Tanzania, Africa (Walsh 2015-2020) developed curriculum text materials.  A Rotary Vocational Training Team (VTT) grant was completed in March of 2016, which sent Walsh as team leader with three selected trainers to five secondary schools located in the Mwanga District of Tanzania.  The team provided instruction to teachers using the curriculum materials focusing on learning methodologies and English conversation.  Walsh taught at a government and Islamic secondary school.  Publications about teaching in Tanzania have been made in the African Journal of Teacher Education (Walsh, 2012, 2015 & Walsh et. al., 2017). In recognition of his teaching and VTT grant work Walsh received the Rotary Guardian of Integrity award in 2017.

During his final ACS tenure years instruction was provided for high ability T/G grade six students in the Extended Learning Program (ELP) facilitating project work in mathematics (i.e., probability, survey data, and Logo programming) and humanities (i.e., world history ancient civilizations to the medieval period).  He taught mathematics using his text The Survey Toolkit published at Key Curriculum Press in 2009.  Supplemental teaching materials and activities were developed from the classroom and resulted in the published text The Survey Toolkit Resource Manual available as a pdf file link to The Journal of Statistics Education (JSE) publication “Implementing Project Based Survey Research Skills to Grade Six ELP Students with The Survey Toolkit and TinkerPlots” (JSE Vol. 19, No. 1 (2011).  Exploring Computer Science Using MicroworldsEX e-book was published at Logo Computer Systems, Inc. (LCSI) in 2013 and revised in 2017 has supported teaching of Logo code language and programming for ELP and regular education students.  Instructing upper elementary and middle school students’ on MicroworldsEX was provided for the Early Outreach Program (formerly OPPTAG) at the Iowa State University during the summers of 2015-2019.  In 2020 Exploring Computer Science Using Lynx was published at LCSI using the web based Logo coding platform.

During his elementary ACS teaching tenure Walsh provided Logo computer programming instruction and developed his text on the survey curriculum.  The Logo MicroworldsEX curriculum was developed at Iowa State University based on his dissertation research.  In 2013 Walsh left the ACS and has been focused on his authoring projects, conference presenting, workshops, and adjunct teaching opportunities, including Rotary and BTZ projects.  Conference PowerPoint presentations and workshops on the use of the Logo and survey curriculum programs have been made in the U.S. and internationally (i.e., World Conference on Gifted Education and the Asian Pacific Conference on Giftedness) in Dubai, UAE, Oslo, Norway and Macau, China.   At the Asian Conference on Teaching Mathematics (ATCM) presentations on the curriculum projects were given.  In 2018 Walsh participated in the CanCode government initiative providing workshop training to teachers in Vancouver, Canada using MicroworldsEX and MicroworldsJr.  CanCode is the Canada national initiative for providing K-12 coding instruction in the schools.  At Maynooth University in Ireland staff development workshops were provided on MicrowordsEX and The Survey Toolkit (TinkerPlots) curriculum for an international math conference in 2019.  In 2020 Walsh wrote Exploring Computer Science Using Lynx, an adaptation of the MicroworldsEX e-book,  published by LCSI and available at hppt://lynxcoding.club.  A workshop using Lynx was provided at the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) educational conference in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2022.  In 2023 attended the ATCM in Prague, Czech Republic providing a hybrid in person and online workshop on Logo coding along with a presentation on The Survey Toolkit.  Then in 2024 presented at the ICME-15 conference in Sydney, Australia on The Survey Toolkit and conducted a Logo coding workshop on the LYNX platform.

Refer to the home web page for curriculum information, links to the vitae, and reference citations.

Updated: December 2024