1. Your role at Burke's
ED Tech Support Specialist
2. When did this opportunity take place?
NAIS, People of Color Conference in San Antonio Texas, Nov 30-Dec 4
3. Summary of workshop/opportunity
Our world is filled with systems. Social, justice, and even technological systems have a profound effect on our schools and communities. The social unrest and divisive landscape of the country amid the global pandemic lifted the veil to reveal systemic constructs. From technology to social systems, biases and blind spots affect everyone in our schools.
Goals & Collaborations:
What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project?
The speaker Masha Maxwell (Head of Technology and Innovation, Atlanta International Schoo GA), and John Yen (Director of Technology at Polytechnic School) had a fantastic presentation where questions were specific to our day-to-day work and the system we use, and how we have to open our minds and thoughts to how even these systems can affect views and social views of our students and staff.
The idea is that as a school we also depend on various computer systems for things like data, attendance, and scheduling and even things like lunch menus (delivery via email). One would think that this doesn't affect social issues, but if we look closer this system carries very close important information that affects our community every day.
In the workshop, we had the opportunity to talk about examples like a lunch menu. A lunch menu that is electronically delivered every week to the school community by a tech team that works with the system that makes this automatic, Here is an example, "Have you taken a look at your school menus lately? Culturally misappropriation of food items can have the effect of death by a thousand cuts."
"Chinese Chicken Salad" - this example was used during the workshop for a school that had salad day, that was called and yet in Chinese culture, the type of salad served had nothing to do with the culture.
Examples like this continued the discussion in small groups with every sharing a similar experience where systems that hold students' pronouns are not found or data systems that don't have proper pronunciation or spelling of names. You have to think that all these systems do carry an effect and we have to make moves to make this company makes changes and open our schools to expect and look for more from everyone.
How does what you learned to connect to your goals this year?
One of my goals this year is to be more aware of the effects my work and day-to-day bring to the students and the community. It's important to me that our community continues to grow toward a more inclusive and understating place every single day. I want to continue to push to have conversations with heads of schools with leaders of the community and make procedures and outline best practices.
In addition, I have contacted the presenters to learn more about the current project they are working on targeting technology systems in schools to create a ranking-based system and the continued fight to have the system work and be tailored for the ongoing changes of schools.
How might this opportunity lead to the collaboration with other faculty?
Only by working with others and collaborating we as a community can tackle some of the hard conversations and issues that arise.
6. Would you recommend this opportunity? Why or why not?
Yes, this workshop brings real problems that most might not see as front-facing. It also reminds me that we should always see everything with multiple lenses because even the small things affect us all. 7. Attach/add the URL/Website to the post
https://pocc.nais.org/
Tags: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and DEI