The busy months continue. The group has been quite active in writing especially on how COVID-19 has affected adoption of distance learning and distance teaching. What has been great is that also the Affiliated “WildCARDEs” have written several articles in conferences and journals, critically reflecting their own work as educators and the adoption of ed-tech in their organizations and in general.
Here’s a couple of the recent articles that you might find interesting as the COVID-19 pandemic impact is still on. These are especially useful when critically examining what kind of choices we are making with ed-tech. Find more CARDE publications (surprisingly) under “Publications”.
Teräs, M., Suoranta, J., Teräs, H., & Curcher, M. (2020). Post-Covid-19 Education and Education Technology ‘Solutionism’: a Seller’s Market. Postdigit Sci Educ https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00164-x
In this article we look at the implications of hasty adoption of ed-tech and digitalization in education, and more specifically one of its trending form, datafication. We should understand that technology is in fact not neutral and it impacts our pedagogical models, ways of work and even views of what is learning, which is not always a positive thing. Therefore what we should do, is what already Hanna Arendt suggested in her book The Human Condition in the 1950s, to really think what we are doing. Sound simple, but are we really doing it?
The EdTech Trojan Horse: A Critical Narrative of the Emergency Pivot to Online Learning
In this article Nathalie and Nicholas are taking an interesting dialogical email approach to discuss where hasty adoption of ed-tech could be taking us. They raise several important issues especially related to equity and ethics, and also show that we should not always blindly trust recommendations that come from authorities. Instead, we should critically evaluate our choices based on our expertise as teaching professionals.
As said, there are several interesting articles under the Publications, so go on and see them for yourself!
Near future plans: research and building a critical ed-tech network
With research, we are currently looking at ways to approach datafication and how it affects teacher identity through. There are a couple of interesting recent articles that employ social science fiction in exploring how current trend of data-driven education, analytics, algorithms and datafication might impact teaching and learning in the future. We’ve found these pretty interesting and exciting, and as a method that could be developed further with sociological imagination, narrative research, Future Workshops method ((Jungk and Müllert 1987). Here are a couple of articles:
Felicitas Macgilchrist, Heidrun Allert & Anne Bruch (2020) Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology, Learning, Media and Technology, 45:1, 76-89, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2019.1656235
Neil Selwyn, Luci Pangrazio, Selena Nemorin & Carlo Perrotta (2020) What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction, Learning, Media and Technology, 45:1, 90-106, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2020.1694944
In addition building international connections, we’ve also been looking into building a more active critical ed-tech / digitalization of education network in Finland. For this, we’ve been working closely especially with Assistant Professor Pekka Mertala from the University of Jyväskylä. We’ve found that there are many actors out there who share our vision that we should dig deeper into the impact of digitalization in education. Hope to report more about these endeavors soon, and of possible seminars / meetings we might have.