Mouse Spotlight: Darlene Bowman
Darlene Bowman is a NYC DOE teacher with over 15 years of experience providing highly specialized instructional support for students with significant challenges in the NYC Department of Education’s District 75. Darlene recently became the President of Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) -- Staten Island Chapter and currently teaches high school students with Autism in a self-contained District 75 school. Darlene’s school began implementing Mouse Create 3 years ago. Since then she has developed a robust Mouse program at her school, and used the opportunity to immerse herself in a variety of STEM and CS topics including Green Tech, Game Design, and Coding skills through at least 6 different Mouse professional development trainings.
We asked Darlene what inspired her to implement Mouse Create and to engage her students so actively with our STEM and creative computing courses. Darlene’s enthusiasm began because it supported her students’ needs; “Students with (and without) disabilities [can] benefit from the step by step visual instructions, the time given to ‘explore’ between tasks. Also because their digital skill level doesn’t matter. They ALL can create with Mouse.”
She went on to say “Mouse makes it easy and fun for students (AND their teachers) to learn creative computing skills that are applicable to the 21st century digital skills that students will need... I’ve used Mouse during the day and for our after school program for 3 years and we STILL haven’t covered all the topics that Mouse provides.”
Darlene aiding her students in presenting their robot candidate on Robot Election at Mouse
Because Darlene is located in NYC, she has brought her students to multiple events at the Creative Computing Lab at Mouse HQ. After these events, she was inspired to obtain enough funding for Mouse to host a youth making event at her school!
Mouse is incredibly grateful for enthusiastic and dedicated educators like Darlene. It is through her work that Mouse is able to foster diversity in STEM and support students to engage with computer science and creative technology to solve real problems and make meaningful change in our world.
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