1000 Featured ED: Designing for Possibility

When:
06/12/2015 @ 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM
2015-06-12T16:00:00-07:00
2015-06-12T17:30:00-07:00
Where:
California Ballroom

1) Antero Garcia, Assistant Professor, Colorado State University
Equitable Initiative: Supporting Teachers and Youth of Color through Tabletop Gameplay

Beginning with a look at the connected learning roots of tabletop roleplaying games, this paper explores the learning affordances of non-digital gaming. In particular it looks at how a game built on Eurocentric tropes can be leveraged for equitable learning, critical literacies development, and civic education. Finally, this paper draws on findings from ethnographic research on tabletop gaming communities to highlight specific connections to classroom pedagogy and teacher professional development.

2) Shirin Vossoughi, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
A Praxis of Embodiment: On the Role of Gesture, Gaze and Language in an After-School Tinkering Program

Analyzing ethnographic data from a social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010) on after-school learning and equity, this paper describes the transformative shifts that emerged when researchers and educators co-developed new ways of seeing the role of embodiment in learning. As participants co-analyzed photographs and video-recordings of hands-on scientific and artistic activities, they began to notice and trace the coordination of children’s and adults’ hands, eyes and voices, and consider the subjective meanings these interactions held for participants. This newfound perception brought into relief the embodied forms of pedagogical intervention that either stifled or cultivated student thinking and agency, and gave life to a sustained practice of reflexivity and intentionality among educators. I conclude by arguing for a relational and political theory of embodiment in learning, one that interweaves micro-interactional analysis with political understandings of what it means for teachers and students to embody alternative social and educational possibilities.

3) Cindy Cruz, Assistant Professor, Department of Education
Digital Practices of Queer Street Youth: New Literacies in the Age of Geo-Social Applications

Much of digital and new media literacy research takes place in predominately privileged educational spaces and middle class contexts, where elite youth are able to leverage their knowledge and participation with digital technologies, maker culture communities, and networked social media sites into academic achievement, career possibilities, and even civic engagement (Ito, M., Gutierrez, K., Livingstone, S., et al, 2013; Zimmerman, 2012). Yet despite a growing educational and technological disparity between in-school and out-of-school learning for non-dominant youth, I have found that LGBTQ street youth develop practices of digital improvisation and re-mixing with mobile (SmartPhone) technologies to leverage their own basic needs and interests. This case study of 30 young people aged 17-23 illuminates how homeless queer youth bend digital technologies in ways that circumvent surveillance and must be seen as creative, innovative, and resistant practices of knowledge and survival.

Ito, M., Gutierrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., Schor, J., Sefton-Green, J., Watkins, C. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.

Zimmerman, A. (2012). Documenting dreams: new media, undocumented youth and the immigrant rights movement. University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Civic Paths Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics Project [Working paper, online], 6.

4) Cristobal Martinez, Ph.D., Arizona State University
Our Digital Media is a Knife Tongue

New Literacy Studies and New Literacies Studies frameworks suggest a colonial continuum between reading, writing, and digital literacies. Simultaneously, media theories argue that the increasingly accessible and malleable properties of digital media in the hands of diverse peoples can lead toward more equitable publics. The continuum between reading, writing, and digital literacies provides a seemingly vexing, or perhaps competitive, crossroads of both subjugation and emancipation. Through a series of worked examples produced within formal and informal learning environments, Our Digital Media is a Knife Tongue theorizes various social, cultural, political, and economic implications of indigenous self-determined media.

 
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