Friday, September 21, 2018
September 25...For the Technology Group
Use this space to continue to discuss your ideas about how to move forward. You can discuss possible common readings, continue to brainstorm about whether your group will do anything together beyond the reading group, etc. I (Kurt) will try to participate, too.
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Thanks for welcoming me into this group, everyone! I'm really looking forward to it as the subject area proves one of great personal interest and fascination but not one I have yet studied. An anthology I recently came across is Hutzel, Bastos, and Cozier’s (2012) Transforming City Schools through Art: Approaches to Meaningful K-12 Learning. This work covers urban education reform through a model of community development with the practices and beliefs of using cultural resources available in an area in contrast to engaging dialogue regarding what a community lacks. Shifting the energy and focus of urban education from neighborhoods being designated as underprivileged to recognizing environments as communities rich with diversity and cultural capital highlights a change in dialogue and response that I'd be curious to explore with regards to its relevance to approach to and use of technology and makerspaces. Another article I found in The Atlantic brings up the conversation and ideas about creativity coupled with entrepreneurial pursuits that makerspaces encourage. The article is entitled, "How Makerspaces Help Local Economies" and you can read it here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/makerspaces-are-remaking-local-economies/390807/. I have not yet pinpointed the specific work I'd like to accomplish, so I'm open to ideas to collaborate or reinforce one another's work. Thanks, everyone!
ReplyDeleteYes, an “asset” approach can be very helpful. I have never thought about connecting asset thinking in urban areas to makerspaces, but it seems like an interesting thought experiment.
DeleteI added the following articles to our group folder on Mendeley including:
ReplyDeleteWhat we learned about technology and teacher education in 2017 Bourdieu And Cultural Studies
Virtual communities as tools to support teaching practicum : putting Bourdieu on Facebook
Research in technology education: Looking back to move forward
TPACKing: A constructivist framing of TPACK to analyze teachers' construction of knowledge
They are on TPACK and Bourdieu. I feel that in order for us to come up with a topic we can all work on, we need to find common readings that discuss technology in education from different critical orientations. If would share any readings you may have on your topic with you group, that would be great.
I agree very much that a common grounding some critical literature is definitely in order. I will add Langdon Winner’s "The Whale and the Reactor" (a classic) and possibly a short piece I wrote on philosophy of ed tech to the mix (I’ll give details in class).
DeleteThank you Moe for those. I have come across Bourdieu in some of my readings, but have not yet read any of his work. Also, I came across two articles in my searching that relate to Critical Theory and makerspaces. One of them, Sandy, fits in very nicely with what you are talking about with looking at makerspaces through the cultural capital that students bring to the table. Another brings up some problems the authors fear may become the norm in makerspaces as they become mainstream, including a few of the following issues:
ReplyDelete1)focus on STEM and making as a source for the government, military, and private corporations to further their capitalist/militarist agenda with a steady supply of workers
2)the nostalgic idea of the "american entrepreneur" creating and making, which might marginalize other communities
3) the way that making seems to be geared toward, and mostly experienced by, white middle-class males and the need to remain sensitive to the cultural capital that immigrants and other minority communities bring to the table out of necessity or cultural norms
I will share both of these articles with you guys on Mendeley.
Thanks for adding to the critical perspective that is (I argue) often lacking ed tech literature. In two weeks we are scheduled to read a critique of STEM/STEAM that will touch a bit on some of what is troubling you. Also, tech-ish spaces in education definitely need to be looked at in order to figure out how to make them more attractive/interesting to a wider variety of people.
DeleteI looked in the Mendeley group and it looks like we are rolling! Kurt, do you want to be added to the group? I just added two articles for us. The first article (Toward a Typology of Technology-Using Teachers in the “New Digital Divide”: A Latent Class Analysis of the NCES Fast Response Survey System Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools, 2009) uses nationally collected data to analyze how teachers in different schools use technology in their classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe second article (The Makerspace Movement: Sites of Possibilities for Equitable Opportunities to Engage Underrepresented Youth in STEM) focuses on the experiences of four different students learning and working in a makerspace. This article is particularly interesting because the makerspaces are situated in areas with a low SES.
I'm really excited about the resources that we are collecting! It could be fun to do a project or paper together if you think our interests align. It sounds like Sandy and Joy are both interested in maker-centered learning, so we could do something if you think that would be fun! Moe I know you aren't interested in maker-centered learning, but I bet we could figure out how to hit all of our interests if you'd like! No stress if anyone would rather work more independently though, it's just a thought!
Sure, you can add ne, although I must admit that Mendeley sounds like a technology that could hang me up…we’ll see. As for the stuff you mention: the second one sure fits nicely with what Joy was worrying about in her post. I’d be interested to see what sort of theoretical/conceptual frames the first study employs…
Delete