What are the literacies of resisting the new norm(al)? [1825] Home : Annual Conference 2017

What are the literacies of resisting the new norm(al)? [1825]

Public Group Active 4 years, 8 months ago

Thu, Sep 7 2017, 10:45am – 12:00pm

Authors: Frances Bell

Room: Elizabeth Gidney I (2)

Theme: Empowerment in Learning Technology

Type: 20-minute session

Description

This presentation highlights some of the new norm(al)s of learning technology (LT) and explores ways of shaping LT. The presentation will engage with the audience on three broad themes: empowerment in LT, ethical implications of creation, adoption and use of technologies in education, and LT being the subject of critical reasoning by learners and teachers.

Digital literacy of students and teachers is addressed in frameworks such as Building Digital Capabilities Framework https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability from JISC; and the ALA Framework for Literacy for Higher Education (Association of College and Research Libraries 2016). Josie Fraser’s working definition of digital literacy is “functional technical skills + critical thinking + social engagement”. Wikipedia has achieved much in giving free access to knowledge and information (Fraser 2017) but structural inequalities of race and gender persist despite good intentions: white men remain over-represented in editorial activity and content. Locally-based activist editathons eg http://www.artandfeminism.org/find-an-event/ on Art & Feminism, or during Black History month are working to change things.

LT, whether it is a service mandated by educational institutions and authorities, or a ‘found’ resource such as a social networking service (SNS) or search engine, can become an objective element of the context, and beyond critique. ‘Free’ services can rely on making money from mining user data, and ethical issues go beyond the privacy of learner data to its categorisation and hidden use in the “algorithmic culture, which wraps abstraction inside of secrecy and sells it back to you as, “the people have spoken.” http://www.thelateageofprint.org/2010/06/14/how-to-have-culture-in-an-algorithmic-age/

Given that learning and other digital technologies, that may emerge from local innovations, morph as they move through rounds of Venture Capital and other funding regimes, and may be subject to series of acquisitions and mergers, our reasoning about them cannot rely on dissection and static description. A first step is to question our acceptance of what governs reality. It is possible, if sometimes difficult, to make active choices about if and how we use technologies, and to revisit those choices over time.
Examples that have different approaches and implications include Domain of One’s Own, ClassDojo, and Raspberry Pi /Code Clubs initiatives will be shared in preparation for a discussion around the following questions:

how can we choose and shape the LT used in learning and teaching?
how can we adopt and use LT ethically?
what critical literacies do we need to resist the new norm(al)?

References
Fraser, J. (2017) ‘Today’s Children’s Machine’, Hello World, Available from: https://helloworld.cc/2j7SGVw
Association of College and Research Libraries (2016). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

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