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?

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?

[Mindi Reich-Shapiro (She/Her)]

I liked the way the resource was organized and presented, using specific examples to highlight empowering and disempowering aspects of technology.

I was pleasantly surprised by the scope of the project designed by Warrick, who is an Early Childhood Education teacher candidate. It’s a wonderful project for young children, who should be empowered to use technology safely, in the same way that we teach them to safely cross the street. I was wondering, based on the description of the project, what ages/grades it was designed for (K-2?).

The stories all resonated. I really liked Rolla’s video and was heartened to hear that she found Scratch easy to navigate. I’m hoping to learn how to use Scratch in the workshop this summer. I have no experience with block programming. Sadly, I found the mini-workshop for ECE during the May 25th orientation both confusing and disempowering (much like Evelyn and Smartboard). We didn’t have a lot of time (our breakout session started late) and the facilitator didn’t provide an introduction to the basics of block programming and the Scratch environment. We had a very short amount of time to tinker and a project that required several steps to complete. When the facilitator asked people to show what they had done, the only people who were able to complete something were those who had previously used Scratch. After the workshop, I went into the Scratch program and took some time to tinker. I still don’t understand much, but I was able to begin navigating. As with everything, there is a learning curve. It’s important for those who are expert to recognize that beginners need both time and guidance to find their way (as with Lisbeth).

In my classes at BMCC, I use OpenLab rather than Blackboard. It’s a wonderful platform and, once you know how to use it, it’s really easy to create posts and embed videos and photos and links to other sites. It’s easy to take online “gallery walks” of colleagues’ work and to leave comments and “talk” in almost real time. However, there is a bit of a learning curve in getting to know OpenLab. So, I take time during the first class of the semester to go through the site and demonstrate, and students can follow along and practice on their own laptop or tablet. I make sure to link students to the “Help” videos on OpenLab and I also make myself available throughout the semester to answer questions and provide guidance. We re-visit OpenLab in class, and students who are more comfortable navigating the technology help their classmates, too.

Technology can be fun and exciting and wonderful. It can also be confusing and scary and very disempowering. To create an equitable CITE environment requires scaffolded learning that builds on each student’s prior knowledge and lived experience and accounts for significant differences in experiences with different technologies.

 

[Aankit Patel (he/him/his)]

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?

[Mindi Reich-Shapiro (She/Her)]

Hi Aankit: I think that might be very helpful. I’m working with a colleague on the artifact design for our ECE 211 class, but she is in a different workshop, and I’m not sure we are going to use Scratch for that artifact (it’s one possibility).

But I really do want to learn how to use Scratch and to dig into the possibilities (and limits). As my students are early childhood educators, Scratch seems like a great technology to learn. I’ve never done block programming, and it’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve done any programming, but I’m a quick learner!

[Ruth Guirguis (she/her/ella)]

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

[Jen Longley (she/her)]

What are your thoughts on the teacher candidate visual resource? It was an engaging and entertaining medium to capture the message and get the

What surprised you? That Rolla & Warwick used such tech-heavy resources in ECE classrooms.

What resonated with you? When Lisbeth experienced issues with tech and used tech to get support/ have her questions answered. Giving up is often the 1st response.

What other perspectives do you wish had been included? More of the students who had tech issues and used tech to solve the issues — like Lisbeth, but in the classroom.  Or students who had issues in their teacher ed classes — maybe researching in the library — and used tech to solve the issues.

[Carol Barclay (she/her)]

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.

 

 

[Yolanda Medina (She/her)]

Hi everyone:

I really enjoyed reading the comic book where teacher candidates share their experiences with Tech tools. It is such a great way to engage students with storytelling. Maybe I can even have them write their journals this way. It would be fun and engaging. I was surprised to read how we can assume students know basic tech needs like accessing email, and navigating Blackboard. I have made that mistake assuming that since we are post pandemic, most students have expertise in most of these tools. I need to return to teaching about tech as I did before the pandemic.

I think that the security issue resonates with me the most. I am lazy when it comes to checking the privacy of the tech tools. I need to spend more time reading them. However, the ones I have read for the previous module, I didn’t really understand them. Maybe CUNY CITE can help us interpret them.

[Jillian Crosby]

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.

[Vee Tapia (she/her/ella)]

As a fan of graphic novels I was hooked right away and enjoyed the way the information was presented. I learned about “Scratch” , a new platform I will be exploring and hopefully applying in my practice.

I made a connection with the poem by Michelle Ortiz. I was reminded of my mother and the similarities with Ortizes’ parents in the poem. I thought about how sometimes I get frustrated with my mother when she doesn’t understand technology. But I remind myself that this is new to her and I have to be patient.

Making presentations with Google slides also resonated with me. It took me back to the lockdown when teachers had to quickly switch to online teaching. We had to figure out how to make teaching fun, appealing and almost mimic what we did in the classroom. Although tedious at times, I enjoyed learning new tricks and other platforms to make the learning fun and enjoyable.

I would’ve liked to see other educators’ perspectives and platforms they use.

[Jean-Yves Plaisir (He/him/and/his)]

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.

 

[Sara Vogel, PhD. (she/her)]

Thanks for this feedback!

[Kristin Scarola (she/her)]

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.

[Michele Bonna (she/her)]

I have lived in the world of typewriters and laptops. AOL and Instagram. I still do not feel 100% confident when using technology. I am comfortable with the repetitive aspect of it, but to understand sites in all of its entirety…no. I know that I under-utilize the sites that I visit and the insight that can be gained from understanding their complexities are lost on me.

I totally related to some of the stories presented in the infographics. I typically cringe when there are talks of technology use. When teaching my EDU 201 course, I create several backups to compensate for the what ifs. What if the prome board stops working? What if we lose internet connection? What if my password does not work.

However, in the case of my doe student, technology is her friend. She uses text to speech as highlighted in the infographic because she has trouble reading and writing. She is able to function with her peers and make progress towards proficiency.

So, I say all this to say, what resonated with me is the idea that technology is here to stay and that I have to be less fearful of it.
What I wish was included is how does having digital literacy enable one to become proficient in their daily lives outside of school.

[Kirsten Cole (she/her)]

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.

[Christopher M Aviles (they/them)]

At first glance and review, I felt the visual resource for teacher candidates was a very welcoming and approachable aid. And while reading, I appreciated the flow and organization of thought throughout which made the resource digestible. I also liked the different perspectives on experiences that were presented which can resonate with many community’’s of teacher candidates that enter our teacher ed programs at various points in their career journeys.

I was particularly surprised by the creation of this visual resource. Upon reading the description, I initially thought it was going to be more of a “digestible infographic” about CITE but it turned out to be a more relatable and easily understood graphic novel that told more of a story through connections between folks and their experiences. The experiences of folks who had disempowering perspectives. I feel this aspect really resonated with me most because there are many disempowering moments with tech (at least for me). As someone who would consider themselves to be quite tech literate with some things, I do feel I engage with a lot of tinkering moments when I engage with particular tech platforms and have had throughout my schooling years. However, recently in one of the modules in which we engaged with data via an Excel spreadsheet, I felt a very disempowering moment in which I just couldn’t quite get it and it left me feeling disempowered. However, knowing that resources exist out there and support, I felt myself feeling a shift in how I felt. 

I think for me, as someone who is a non-binary trans questioning person/educator/lecturer/researcher, I am always questioning and wondering if there are people like me and is there space for me. I think a lot about the intersectional approaches and DEI frameworks and in conjunction with CITE’s framework about supporting and focusing on marginalized bodies (Black and Brown bodies in tech) and leveling the playing field within this community, I feel there would be a world in which a spotlight moment that can share unique perspectives in tech and what they experience in terms of joy and frustration navigating a world that is predominately male and white centered.