COURSE: EDC 92 – Seminar and Practicum in Early Childhood Special Education

LAURA KATES

Artifact Description: This project is designed for a new course that will begin being offered in the Kingsborough Education Program in Fall 2024. The course – EDC 92 – Seminar and Practicum in Early Childhood Special Education – will be a capstone fieldwork course, with each section enrolling a maximum of 10 students. My campus CITE team asked me to design a blogging project that would emphasize using digital communications for advocacy and activism.

Learning Outcomes addressed in this project are:

• Explore trends and current issues in early childhood special education in the United States.
• Analyze the sociocultural and political contexts for the development and learning of young children who are culturally and linguistically diverse.
• Create a safe, equitable, positive, and supportive learning environment in which diversities are valued.

Some ISTE Standards addressed in this project are:

1.1 Empowered Learner

Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.

1.2 Digital Citizen

Students recognize the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, learning, and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal, and ethical.

1.3 Knowledge Constructor

Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
1.6 Creative Communicator

Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals.

This project addresses Equitable Pedagogies by engaging teacher candidates in the process of exploring advocacy-related blogs by other educators, by having them self-select a topic of genuine personal meaning and importance related to Early Childhood Special Education, and by scaffolding them in process of formulating a problem statement and a call to action related to their self-selected topics, then putting their perspectives into the world through digital media. The project also supports the teacher candidates entering into dialogue with others calling for reform by inviting a wide range of stakeholders to read and comment on the blog posts.

Digital Practices from the CITE Framework included here are:

• Digitally-supported communication, participation, reflection
• Critically and ethically navigating digital information and media ecosystems

Computing Practices from the CITE Framework included here are:

• Tinkering, experimentation
• Data practices

Digital/Computing tools students will use in this project are:

·  WordPress

·  Padlet

·  Google Docs

·  Blackboard Discussion Board (or similar tool)

·  Search engines

Since enrollment in each section of this course is limited to ten students, this project is designed for work in three teams of three to four students each. Working in teams will allow students to pool their expertise in writing persuasive arguments and in using technological tools. It will also allow them to share and expand their insights and impressions about what the pressing issues related to Early Childhood Education currently are in our society, and in co-constructing a vision for possible solutions.

I’ve chosen WordPress as the platform for the class blog because it’s easily accessible and easy to use. Other instructors may prefer other platforms. This resource on using blogs in the classroom, from University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing, is a very helpful guide for faculty thinking through the how and why of incorporating blogging into coursework.