Learning Technology Community of Practice

This month’s reading: : http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/08/inequalities

Plan for the session:

• • What do you hope to get out of a Community of Practice series?
  • Have you come today with any Learning Technology questions (practical and focused or big and meandering) to address?
  • Questions for discussion:
    • Watters refers to a finding true since the 1980s that rather than changing education, most technologies are used to replicate existing practices. Have you seen examples of technology use that are truly innovative in the classroom?
    • I’d like to focus on this passage; how does it reflect learning at TRU:
      • “There are profoundly important questions we must ask about the shifts that education technology might bring about, particularly if we have our eye towards justice. How does education technology alter the notion of ‘work’ in school, for example – students’ labor as well as teachers’ labor? Who owns all the content and data that students create when using educational technology? How do technology companies use this data to build their algorithms; how do they use it to build profiles and models? How do they use it to monitor, assess, predict, surveil? Who is surveilled; and who is more apt to be disciplined for what’s uncovered?”
    • Watters reminds us that technologies are not neutral. How can we combat the inequities she outlines in this piece?

What are the big questions you have about using educational technologies? What are the pedagogical implications of the choices we make? Where have your TRU colleagues found success — or failure — in playing with new ideas? In these relaxed, guided discussions, we’ll dig into the big issues of EdTech and explore how to implement our theories in our practice.

Our Community of Practice sessions pick up where January’s Digital Detox leaves off, giving you monthly opportunities to dig into the big issues of educational technologies and to strategize with your colleagues. Monthly meetings of the Educational Technologies Community of Practice are structured, community-led discussions, sometimes organized around readings or issues of importance to attendees. And the coffee is on us!