It’s common discourse in teaching and learning circles to hear the comment that we can’t let technology drive our pedagogy. But is it true? If I walk into a classroom and the chairs are fixed rather than movable, it changes how I approach the lesson plan; if there’s no whiteboard or no surface to write…
Welcome to the 2021 TRU Digital Detox. Last year, I used the Digital Detox at least in part to introduce myself to the TRU campus and showcase my priorities in my new role as Coordinator, Educational Technologies. My big thing was hope. Hope! Yes, venture capitalism and surveillance tech and corporate edtech are things that…
Last year, following the example of the very cool team at Middlebury College, we launched the 2020 TRU Digital Detox. In a series of eight essays (and three face-to-face sessions!), we discussed pressing issues in educational technologies. We focused on ethics, algorithms, and data privacy, and we explored the idea of applying an ethics of…
Well, we’ve done it, my friends. This month, you’ve read along with me through eight substantive essays on equity and access, ethics and data privacy, algorithms, contract cheating, critical digital pedagogies, possibilities for resistance, open education, and (my favourite) care ethics. Scrivener (my nerdy word processor of choice) tells me that if you’ve read the…
A quick post to collect some of the takes on the #TRUDigitalDetox floating around the blog-o-sphere over the last month. So, the boss kicked off the blog chatter with his commitment to follow the Detox (he has to; I work here). D’arcy Norman responded in kind. Anne-Marie Scott also introduced the idea on her blog,…
We’re at the end, my Digital Detox friends. (Well, almost: we have two round-up posts coming on Monday, and if you’re on the TRU campus I hope we’ll see you at the closing face-to-face session on February 7th — you can register by clicking here.) If you’ve read all eight of my missives — thank…
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Sure, it’s an aphorism, but it’s a good’un. I mean, it’s not always true. Don’t clean your kitchen with sunlight; soap is, in fact, also an excellent disinfectant. Probably better if you’ve just handled raw chicken. But when we talk about sunshine as a disinfectant, we’re talking about a belief…
So. What if we just say no? In today’s post, I want to talk to you a little more directly about what resistance looks like in the context of our digital detox. Indeed, I want to talk to you about what radical resistance looks like in the context of our digital detox. The common factor…
I’m borrowing the title from a marvellous poem — linked again in context down below — by Kaitlyn Boulding. It’s wonderful to share with students at difficult moments in the semester. To peel back the lid of the sardine can, what we’ve been engaging in this month, so far as we have been talking primarily…
A subtitle of sorts: Contract Cheating and Equity, Data, and Algorithms. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about contract cheating and a lot about what contract cheating tells us about the problems endemic to our relationship to technology. I’ve chosen this as a focus not only because it is a massive growth-area of…