CUNY Academic Commons

Mindi, thank you for sharing about your experience during orientation. Learning Scratch, or any programming language, can be hard. We have two summer camps that will give you much more time to learn, but I know people will need even more individualized support.

I am happy to spend lots of time with folks during the month of July on Scratch. The Monday help sessions are a good place to start, but I wonder if folks will want separate small group sessions at other times during the week? I can help with very specific ideas, challenges, problems, or just walk through fun projects and help folks make something. Is this something you think you’d participate in?

What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? I thought it was so a creative way to express their emotions and thoughts about learning through and about various technologies.

What surprised you? What resonated with you? I was surprised to read about some of the struggles. For example, Lisbeth story was one that I have sometimes felt. Feeling overwhelmed with way too much information and being locked out my accounts is so beyond frustrating!

What other perspectives do you wish had been included? A reflection of a student who felt that were better prepared for the workforce as a result of learning digital and computing skills

1. What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? I found the content relevant and engaging. However, the format does not resonate with me. I found the graphics did not add anything for me, and were distracting, both visually and mentally. I had to use the .pdf to get the typeface to be big enough for me to read easily.

2. What surprised you? I was surprised by how common it apparently is for students to have very limited experience with this technology. I questioned the conclusion to Lisbeth’s story. She asks questions to learn, rather than give up, but the scenario does not mention how she knew where to go for help.

3. What resonated with you? Lisbeth and Evelyn’s experiences resonated with me. In my class last semester, we had a very frustrating final class, when none of the students was able to upload their capstone project to their ePortfolio during the class session, for various, different reasons, some with login, some with formatting, etc. They were a very competent group, and worked with each other, to no avail.

What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? As I clicked the link to access the visual resource, I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect this!  Powering Connections is an innovative document that presents teacher candidate tech experiences through an appealing, animated design.

What surprised you? We assume teacher candidates are tech-savvy because they grew up in a digital world, but this is far from the truth.  They may confidently navigate social media sites like Twitter and Tick Tock but are unsure of digital platforms like CUNYfirst, or Blackboard. The stories of disempowerment are typical of many teacher candidates, so I wasn’t surprised to read about their challenges with technology.  On the reverse, it was refreshing to see teacher candidates adapting to tech and applying it to transform education.

What resonated with you?  Evelyn’s’ story of trials and triumph resonates with me.  I was fearful of creating an eportfolio via Digication but mastered the platform while teaching ECE 110.  I was proud to help students create their eportfolio on a Mac or a PC, then CUNY moved from Digication to Open Lab as its’ eportfolio platform, and the cycle of fear to mastery began again.

What other perspectives do you wish had been included? I’m interested in teacher candidates’ perspectives on tutorials and support services for mastering CUNY digital tools such as CUNYfirst, Blackboard (which will be changed soon), OpenLab, and DegreeWorks.

I found the teacher candidate visual resource quite useful for engaging students to explore many important topics and issues related to learning new technologies. They are good tools for sharing important information and discussing complex issues. I also appreciated the translanguaging phenomenon in Michelle Ortiz’s poem, “Algorithms that Reinforce Racismo”. It’s a great way to reaffirm identity while addressing issues of literacy, inherent biases, and injustices in the use of technology.

What resonated with me the most are the issues around information fatigue, personal privacy, and the concerns about the health impact of sitting in front of computer screens for a long time, including the social and emotional issues associated with it.

Unless they escaped my notice, I would have liked to see the perspectives of students with visual, auditory, and similar kinds of exceptionalities included in the teacher candidate resources.

What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource?I appreciate the variety of perspectives that the resource offers. I’ve had similar experiences with my students- some are very savvy and comfortable navigating tech and problem solving through it, and others who are less experienced and anxious about the expectations for using tech as students and future teachers. Also, I really enjoyed the format. I’ve had students make graphic novel-formats to synthesize texts and they often enjoy it, especially when the can do it collaboratively.

What surprised you?I was surprised at the the project Warrick did in his ECE class. I think it was a great project and valuable to share with others. However, I wonder how this project was applied to the ECE context.

What resonated with you?Lisbeth and Evelyn’s stories resonated with me because they highlighted the ongoing need for person-to-person support. I find especially with my tech reticent students, coaching them is the most effective support because it doesn’t only teach them how to do the task, but builds comfort with using unfamiliar tools.

What other perspectives do you wish had been included?  I would like to better understand how can be both empowering and disempowering for students with a varying disabilities. The supports that can be provided with tech seem endless, I would like to know how a students might access and learn how to use these tools to match their specific needs.

What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? 

Like Vee, I am a big fan of graphic novels, so I really appreciated the opportunity to interact with these stories through that medium. (I also loved reading Power On earlier!) This reminded me that I should continue to look for resources to share info with my students that are outside of more traditional forms of content (e.g. academic articles and videos.)

What surprised you? 

I always assume that our students are much more tech savvy that I am, so it was good to be reminded how frustrated we all get when technology. Especially when technology is connected with bureaucracy, it can be very dehumanizing and demoralizing.

What resonated with you? 

I was really glad to hear how critical the human connection was in supporting folks to work through challenges and to collaborate in uses of technology. I sometimes worry that all this focus on technology will make us more isolated as teachers and learners, and it was important to be reminded that we are all still learning together and that when we engage with each other we are better able to thrive. 

What other perspectives do you wish had been included?

I really appreciated the range of portraits offered here, but, if you’re doing a Volume 2, I’d love to hear stories of how teachers are working with and communicating with families about technology. My students and I talk A LOT about how we engage with families, including when teachers and families have different opinions and perspectives on issues, and we try to think together about how we can build trusting and mutual relationships in our work with families. I’d be really curious to know how the TCs think about this aspect of the work.