A short documentary film by Indranil Choudhury with Sara Vogel
How did a university and a school work together to empower an aspiring teacher to integrate computing into their classroom? To find out, the CITE team visited Michelle Ortiz, a Lehman College – CUNY teacher candidate who guided third graders at Samara Community School in the Bronx to create digital poetry using the Scratch programming environment. We also spoke to Samara’s principal and faculty at Lehman to hear about what supports they need to continue making such initiatives possible.
Strapped for time? Check out the short version of the doc below!
Take action!
- Apply to a CUNY Teacher Education program!
- Already hold a teaching certificate and want to be certified in CS ed? Check out the Advanced Certificates in CS Ed at Lehman College and Hunter College.
Scratch teaching resources
In the video, Michelle introduced her students to Scratch, a free programming environment where users can make games, digital stories and animations. She guided students to create digital poems as part of a project-based bilingual poetry unit.
Want to play around with Scratch and compose your own digital poems? See the project and resource below.
