I would like to introduce myself. My name is Roanny Rodriguez. I was born and raised in Providence with my Dominican roots deeply rooted in my blood. I come from a two-parent household with a younger sister and four pet birds. I went to the University of Rhode for my undergrad where I obtained my bachelor's degree in Human Development. Since I graduated back in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, I decided to take a gap year off school. Throughout this gap. I took a class to become a certified Teacher assistant. I was able to get a job right after at Highlander Chater Elementary School. I was also able to enroll at Rhode Island College to get my Master's in Youth Development. This seemed like the perfect route to take since I already had a Human Development background. Over the course of my Youth Development journey, I obtained a lot of knowledge. Half of my program was spent online which was a new way of learning for me. I had gotten so accustomed to having online classes that when I had to go on campus for the first time during year two, it felt like I was starting school all over again. My experience at RIC was way more fun than my experience at URI. The reason for it was the community that was built with the cohort and the professors. Throughout the two years, in EVERY Youth Development class, we did a Moo-in sign-in. It was our icebreaker in disguise. Before being part of this wonderful community, I hated icebreakers. I didn’t like introducing myself because I would always think “It’s pointless” and “They are not even gonna remember me.” Little did I know, they were so meaningful. Professors do remember my name and my facts, and so do my peers. Spending two years in the same cohort with the same 9 to 10 people was also very helpful because it was better to be more vulnerable in a room where you know people than in a room full of strangers.
I have spent the last 3 years working at a Charter school with third graders as a Teacher assistant. I absolutely loved working with young children, but after obtaining my Master's in Youth Development, I knew that it was time to conclude my time at this charter school. The reason for this decision was that given the degrees that I now have, I should be getting paid for my hard work. As much as it pains me to walk away from the beautiful relationships that I have built with the children and some staff members, I was not being valued the way I should have been. I will cherish all my fun memories from that school as I transition into my new position as a Program Coordinator for New Urban Arts which is a nonprofit organization at Central High School. Since this is a new position that I will be starting in the fall, I am not sure how the organization actually runs, all I know is that I will be working with teenagers in a high school setting. This jump from elementary to high school is very big for me. I am somewhat nervous because I do not know what to expect.
In this class, I was able to define my digital technology position. Before COVID-19 I would consider myself to be a techno-traditionalist, but throughout the pandemic, I have grown into a beginner techno-constructivist. Scott Noon describes a techno-traditionalist to be someone who uses technology proficiently to accomplish traditional classroom tasks. The examples he uses are being able to use word processing lesson plans, electronic grade books, and emails in digital slideshows. As I grew up, I was very into technology. By third grade, I had a computer that I was able to use all on my own. I was part of the generation that grew up and saw The big impact social media was developing on us. In my freshman year of high school, we were doing a lot of stuff online. Yes, we still had our notebooks and pencils to take notes on but we would transfer a lot of it to the computers. By senior year and on I was writing emails back and forth, typing all my assignments online, and taking most of my exams online. He describes a techno-constructivist as a person who uses technology to completely change the approaches to teaching and learning in the classroom. The examples that he draws to this are online projects, virtual field trips, WebQuest, digital portfolios, and virtual classrooms. Since I graduated from URI and was living through a pandemic, I was forced to rely more on technology than I was already relying on. I was introduced to virtual field trips and how to actually plan something like that for the kids to enjoy. To me, this seemed absurd but after actually doing it, it was pretty fun.
I believe that it is essential to know each other in order to build a strong community. I also believe that it is crucial to allow students to make their own choices. Lastly, I believe that students should have an opportunity to freely express themselves. My beliefs are connected to my Youth development experience. Toward the end of my program, I was responsible to create a capstone. I was given little instruction and was just told what were some examples of the expected outcomes. All the examples that were shown to me were extremely different from each other. I wondered what the prompt or objective was and the truth was that there was none. We were responsible to create our own project and inform the audience why it was important to us. Although it might sound very simple, it was one of the hardest tasks I have completed. This capstone gave me the freedom to express my voice. It allowed me to venture out on my own and figure out what was truly important to me. I ended up dedicating this project to my family. As I was digging deep, I truly found that my family was what matters the most to me. By doing this, I learned a lot about my family and myself included. Although I didn’t have the instructions that I would want to have, I had the guidance. My professor was always there to answer the questions that I had and guide me through them. And the times I doubted myself, the most, they believed in me the most. This was very beneficial to me. I believe that the reason for this was the fact that they knew me, these professors actually knew me.
With that being said, I have created a deck of cards that supports my beliefs. This deck of cards contains variations of mini icebreakers. The deck can be split up into three separate color-coded decks. The pink deck is for individual activities. The blue deck is for the activities that can be done with a partner. And the orange deck is for the whole group activities. Students can choose which deck to pick from. They can either choose two cards from one of the colored-coded decks or three cards including one from which deck. Allowing them to do this creates a sense of a choice.
The activities included in the individual deck are to be done alone and then share out as a whole group. Some of the examples that they can choose from are creating a collage with different art materials, clay making, drawing, creating a recipe to make their own physical selves, showing us a picture that they resonate with, blackout poetry or even creating their own poem from scratch. And lastly, they can create a safe room Google slide that represents most of the things they love and they would also include their personalized Bitmoji. Marc Prensky portrays the youth to be so tech-savvy and upholding so much digital power which he refers to as digital natives. Danah Boyd challenges his beliefs and states that these youth are just exposed to technology more. Just because they are exposed more to technology does not mean that they should not be taught how to develop digital tool skills. It is always important to keep in mind that students are not digital natives like society paints them to be, so before letting them create their slide one should go over how to actually make it. These slide threads would originally be created by me with my example and shared out with the students. Once the slides are all completed they can go through them and explore their peers' slides.
The activities included in the partner deck are to be done in pairs or trios and then shared with the whole group. I am still working on this part of my project but the three activities that I currently know they can choose from are teaching their peers a TikTok dance that they love, playing a variation of the game 2 Truth and 1 Lie which is instead 5 truths 2 lies, or play the blind drawing activity. The way this activity is played is one of the partners attaches a piece of paper onto their back. Then the partner behind them draws something onto the piece of paper on their partner's back and then they have to see if they can feel what they are drawing and then draw it onto their piece of paper. The goal is to try to match the same drawing on both pages.
And lastly, the third deck of cards is to be done as a whole group. These activities are more based on the community-building part of my belief. One of the activities included here is Peek-A-Who, which is where they are separated into two different groups and compete with each other in a name-game face-off. Another activity they can do is Rock, Paper, scissors, and cheerleader. In this activity, they will battle it out to see who is the champion of the group, they will be broken up into pairs, and if they lose the mini-round they have to cheer the remaining winners on. Other activities that they can choose from are commonalities, group juggling, or moonball. Moonball is played with a beach ball and the goal is to score as many hits up in the air without letting the ball touch the ground.
By creating these cards, I hope to create a fun atmosphere where these children have a chance to express themselves and also get to know each other. Icebreakers were always something that was hard for me to enjoy because I was so shy. I believe that if I was offered a choice to pick from many different ways of expressing myself, it would have been more enjoyable for me.
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