About the Project
The Community Technology Collective is seeking an experienced Curriculum Developer, to lead a collaborative development process for the Digital Steward Curriculum. The curriculum focuses on community technology and the digital engineering skills needed to redistribute internet connections throughout a community. A detail-oriented developer will refresh our Digital Stewards curriculum to reflect lessons learned from Digital Stewards’ training and work in the field. Responsibilities include creating engaging and interactive lesson plans, developing resource material for student access post-class, and identifying a platform and process for curriculum management and version control. The Curriculum Developer will work closely with members of the Detroit Community Technology Project and Community Technology New York teams to shape project outcomes, timeline, and collaboration points for content updates. The Curriculum Developer for this work is passionate about learning, community technology and Digital Justice, and using popular education methods.
Specific Responsibilities
Curriculum Development
- Review Digital Steward curriculum, as well as instructor and student reflections from past Digital Steward classes
- Create a development plan and timeline for initial curriculum updates
- Identify and develop curriculum modules CTC may use when teaching various groups and organizations
- Work with CTC teams to update curriculum content and ensure relevant, engaging and interactive lesson plans for online and in-person classes
- Create supplementary Digital Steward student guide to optimize classroom learning and support continued learning post-training
- Develop Digital Steward Instructor Guide to support teaching the curriculum
- Work with UX Developer to finalize digital design format of curriculum/modules
Evaluation and Facilitation
- Train Digital Steward Instructors and CTC staff on new curriculum content and supplements
- Collaborate with staff, graphic designers, and web designers to suggest new learning resources
- Design learning assessment tools/methods for Digital Steward Instructors and students
- Develop indicators of success to measure curriculum effectiveness in line with update objectives
- Collaborate with interns and CTC staff to identify a curriculum management platform to host the curriculum, supplements, and related documents
- Recommend process for annual content updates and version control
Meetings and Collaboration
- Meet with members of DCTP and CTNY to review curriculum needs, current uses, and new inputs
- Meet with Digital Stewards and Digital Steward Instructors to identify curriculum uses and needs
- Work with a small group of interns to inform their work to adapt the updated curriculum for the online learning platform
- Attend biweekly meetings with EII Director
Qualifications
- Degree in education, a related discipline, or extensive experience in curriculum design and development
- Experience in developing curriculums and lesson plans
- Familiarity with popular education teaching methods
- Skills & Qualities
- Creative self-starter
- Analytical and detail-oriented
- Strong digital and research skills
- Able to collaborate with multiple individuals at varying levels
- Able to establish effective working relationships with staff, stakeholders and instructors
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Strong project management skills with ability to set and meet deadlines
Compensation
This is a contract position that will take place from May-October 2022. The curriculum developer will receive a stipend of $15,000. Expected start - May 2022.
How to Apply
Please send a resume, cover letter, a writing sample and at least 3 references to communitytech@alliedmedia.org. In your cover letter, please include responses to the following questions:
- Provide an example of when you created a curriculum that was effective and successful in the classroom.
- What do you find exciting and challenging about curriculum improvement and development?
- How have you incorporated popular education methods into building an effective curriculum?
Our Teaching Philosophy
We believe communication is a fundamental human right. Technology and the Internet have the ability to transform our communities, assist in economic development, and help residents understand and utilize the power they already have. Community Technology is a method of teaching and learning about technology with the goal of fostering and restoring relationships and healing neighborhoods. Community technologists are those who have the desire to build, design, and facilitate a healthy integration of technology into people’s lives and communities, allowing them the fundamental human right to communicate, while learning how technology can support both needs and personal and collective visions. Community Technology focuses on teaching strategies that make learning technology accessible and relevant. We believe sharing these teaching practices has the potential to diversify and shape technology fields to be community-oriented. The more people know about the technology around them, the more they will be able to participate in shaping their environment.
About CTC
Community Tech New York (CTNY) and Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) are the first members of an emergent Community Technology Collective (CTC). The Community Technology Collective owes its origins to the creation of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, a partnership of leaders and organizers from across the city that realized the importance of media and technology for community organizing and grassroots economic development. The DDJC defined the direction of digital justice and community technology and created the principles that the CTC follows today, and collaborated with Allied Media Projects to develop the Community Technology and Digital Stewardship approaches.
About the Digital Stewards Program
The Digital Stewards Program, launched in 2012, was an effort to actualize our belief that communication is a fundamental human right at the neighborhood-level in Detroit. The program, created by Allied Media Projects and the Open Technology Institute of the New America Foundation, was seeded in communities that had deep roots in community organizing and existing digital literacy programming including public computer centers, block clubs, a radio station and a youth run technology collective. Digital Stewards received intensive technology training to cultivate their community’s digital ecosystem with a commitment to the Detroit Digital Justice Principles (DDJC), emphasizing access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities. They are an integral component of the digital ecosystem. They are community technologists. They are community organizers, media makers, educators, artists and neighborhood leaders. They come from various neighborhoods, are people of color and range in age from elders to those in their teens. Digital Stewards work in the neighborhoods where they live.