We are thrilled to welcome UC Links Associate Director, Dr. John Cano!!
John gained after-school experience while earning his doctorate at UC Santa Barbara. While at UCSB, John worked with Diana Arya (and also collaborated with Betsy Brenner and Richard Durán) as an instructional technology coordinator for Community Based Literacies programs, co-coordinator for the LEAFY (Literacies for Environmental Awareness and Farming for Youth) after-school program, and coordinator for the Club Proteo afterschool program. John has also made significant contributions to the UC Links network regularly presenting at the UC Links conference, including co-constructing a collaborative workshop with Katie Watkins (Utah) focused on ethnography. During the pandemic John helped develop “App-y hour” as a way to share and learn collaboratively about digital tools and was instrumental in the success of the first UC Links Virtual Youth Summit. As an international and bilingual (Spanish) scholar, most recently, John held the position of Assistant Professor in the Instituto de Estudios en Educación at the Universidad del Norte in Colombia, the same university where he earned his BS in computer science and M.Ed in educational technology prior to migrating to the US in 2017 to pursue his Ph.D. Currently, John is in the process of finalizing an edited volume with his Colombian colleagues, Educación Intercultural y las mediaciones TIC: Un Abordaje desde la interdisciplinariedad (Editorial Universidad del Norte).
John is passionate about teaching, learning, new technologies, and collaboration (among many other things) and we’re thrilled that John will be bringing his passions and experience to the UC Links statewide office.