This month’s reading: : http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/08/inequalities
Plan for the session:
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- 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?