help needed for the survey

[Madhavi Sudarsan]

Hi all, 

I am a FT ECE faculty at San Jose City College. As a part of my sabbatical research, I want to know how preschools successfully managed virtual teaching and what the challenges were. There are a few guidelines available on this topic. However, it is always very insightful to hear from teachers who have implemented this in the field and have a real-life experience of what works and what does not. I want to find out from ECE students, educators, and mentor teachers their concerns and skills related to teaching virtually and using technology with children.  

I would also like to hear from the ECE faculty about their experience of training their students to deal with this challenge.  

I am from Silicon Valley, so I am reaching out to teachers in this area. However, I want to find out the effectiveness and the accessibility of virtual learning in different areas of California. This will highlight the equitable strategies that teachers used while working with children coming from areas with less access to technology. For that I need your help. 

I will create OER materials on developmentally appropriate practices for online teaching for young children, which will be shared with state OER initiative.  

The need for this resource: 

For the past two years, we have been dealing with unique circumstances due to the pandemic. All these years early childhood education professionals are advocating no or limited screen exposure to young children. Suddenly overnight preschool teachers had to move to online instructions. We were hoping that it was a short-term transition, but it has already been more than 1 and ½ years and we are still not in the clear. Even though most preschools have started in person classes, we now cannot ignore the role of virtual instruction in preschool. We need to prepare our teachers, as online instruction (even for young children) is here to stay. So, I decided to take up this topic as a part of my sabbatical project.  

Can you please forward this short survey link to your ECE students, teachers and mentor teachers in your area? The book will be more meaningful and widely applicable if I get input from various parts of the state and not just from the Bay area.  

I would love to get their input by Sept.16^th to be added to the research part of the book, since I need to complete this project by the end of 2022.  

Thanks 

Madhavi