Module 7 — LaGuardia Community College

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  Posted by Ifeoma Nwoke (she/her) on June 13, 2023 at 6:26 pm

  After reviewing the visual resource, “Powering Connections: Teacher candidate perspectives on Computer Integrated Technology”, please respond to the following questions in this thread:

  What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? What surprised you? What resonated with you? What other perspectives do you wish had been included?

• Agnieszka Rakowicz (she/her)

  Member

  June 17, 2023 at 12:03 pm

  I think that the teacher candidate visual resource is a useful way to present challenges of teacher candidates’ experiences with technology. Even though the cartoon format is not my preferred way of absorbing information, I do understand that many people like it. And, the variety of formats is always good.
  I think that there is this assumption that the teacher candidates have a basic (baseline) technical knowledge and skills. This is not necessarily true. And so, offering individual and group support to teacher candidates who may have difficulties with technology is really important.
  The poem from Professor Espinosa’s student is really impressive. I think multilingual teacher candidates’ perspectives and challenges with technology, perhaps, don’t get enough attentions. I was glad to see this inclusion in these slides.
  Maria Savva

  Participant

  June 19, 2023 at 5:36 pm

  Part I: I agree with Agnieszka that while students today may be proficient with some technology (like social media), that is not necessarily the case for all technology. For example, students sometimes have limited knowledge when it comes to technology programs used in school (like ePortfolio, Blackboard, Excel etc.).  Part II: There is one section that mentions using a game to show how students how to protect their privacy on the internet but the name of the game is not mentioned. Why wasn’t the name of the game shared? Can this be shared with our group? Part III: Finally, I really like the poem that illustrates how ‘the system’ can be biased towards individuals who are more marginalized, in this case immigrant parents. It really does an excellent job of showing how this can happen.
  Laurie Gluck (she/her)

  Member

  June 20, 2023 at 12:04 pm

  I totally recognized Lisbeth’s situation. I have felt it myself and seen students struggle with keeping track of multiple logins necessary to access the CUNY technology complex. The answer to her problem is obvious, but not. It is not  always obvious who to ask and where to get help. Sometimes help is not there when you need it. Sometimes you ask and the answer is hard to understand; techspeak can be opaque. I see multiple factors that can block this simple way to empower oneself: fear of asking, a lack of knowing where the resources are, or lack of confidence asking will get the needed results.
  Thomas Cleary

  Member

  June 20, 2023 at 2:01 pm

  Lisbeth’s and Evelyn’s stories resonated the most for me.  There is an assumption that everyone understands technology now days and there’s not that much effort by institutions to provide people the first few steps to using it.  In the Library we saw this a lot in COVID with students not knowing how to use word processing programs or even knowing how to right click (because laptops don’t have mouse buttons anymore).  This can be discouraging to many and when there’s no resources to support this learning, we lose students.

  For the resource I liked the graphic novel format, especially for those two stories. A lot of tech based  teaching and learning is visual and this matches that learning style well.
  Maria Jerskey (she/her)

  Member

  June 21, 2023 at 1:33 pm

  I was surprised (pleasantly) at the simplicity of issues raised: who can help me with finding email and password; how do I use this platform? What are privacy issues I should be thinking about? These all had good solutions even as complex issues (e.g., of equity) are raised.  

  I guess one perspective is the person who doesn’t feel they have time to tinker and play. How can we as teachers, parents, teacher-educators (and administrators) build in time to cultivate a computational thinking practice. Even 15 minutes per day could lead to stronger fluency.

  I really liked the bilingual poem and felt myself as I read it reach for rudimentary Spanish and try out cognates. I thought about how I would figure out what it says in Spanish (Google Translate) but then how I would need to remain flexible enough about the meaning to still consider the poet’s intentionality and the effect of having two languages. This process actually helps to slow down and remember that language is never transparent (an assumption people have about “language competency”; rather: meaning is co-constructed.  

  I think providing visual resources is HUGE! Really eager to find out if I can learn how to do this. It would inspire me to reconsider so much of what I share with students.
  Kenneth Yin (he/him)

  Member

  June 23, 2023 at 4:17 am

  The teacher-candidate visual resource is very appealing in its design and quite illuminating. It is very interesting to hear the perspectives of teacher candidates themselves on computing-integrated education. It was disheartening to hear how Lisbeth almost dropped out of the program at Lehman College during orientation because she felt so overloaded with information about using the college email, resetting her password, and onboarding, for instance. Luckily, though, Lisbeth was resourceful enough to ask for help and receive the proper support, thereby transforming a moment of disempowerment into one of empowerment. The idea of the tension playing out with some teacher candidates through the different roles that they have as parents, teachers, and students resonated with me as an educator of teacher candidates. The visual resource seems to present a good sampling of teacher candidates of different backgrounds. Of course, expanding the resource to include more candidates at the various CUNY colleges could prove even more instructive.