Author(s)

Acosta, E., Cifuentes, L., Otoo, S., & Degardin, G. (2022).

Year
2022
APA Citation

Acosta, E., Cifuentes, L., Otoo, S., & Degardin, G. (2022, April). New Mexico Connected Communities Collaborative: Supporting and Strengthening School Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 2182-2188). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Topics
Educator Pipeline and Retention
Literacy Curriculum
Student Wellbeing
Math Curriculum
Target Population
General Education
Students with FRPL/Low Socio-economic status
Grade Level
PreK/Childcare
Elementary: K-Grade 5
Middle: Grade 6-8
High: Grade 9-12
States
New Mexico
Abstract

The COVID pandemic magnetized the challenges of supporting educators in providing students with high-quality education opportunities. The migration to online and remote learning systems placed educators in a reactive state, shifting education to a platform that was both new and complex, while still requiring educators to address the social-emotional needs of their students. The New Mexico Connected Communities Collaborative (NMC3) was developed as a partnership between several university and community organizations in southwest New Mexico, including New Mexico State University. To meet the technical, pedagogical, and emotional needs of educators, students, and caregivers, NMC3 created a suite of learning experiences to impact educators by improving their capacity to provide quality of online learning experiences for PreK-12th students, and to support families and caregivers to engage successfully with online learning. Working groups, including the Technology Support (Tech) POD provided targeted support. The Tech POD served as the vehicle to deliver the NMC3 support, developing sessions, online tutorials, and the NMC3 website which serves as a repository for educators and caregivers to access resources and tools. NMC3 developed and delivered over 30 sessions in its first six months of implementation, of which 20 sessions had a technology focus, through our effort, we reached over 1600 educators and caregivers across the state of NM.