Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology Event, University of Brighton, October 15th, 2013 (click on ‘scribd’ icon bottom right for full view).
Videos of the presentations from the day can be accessed via the links below.
Professor Avril Loveless’s presentation
See also notes from the paper given by Avril Loveless below.
Dr Carlo Perrotta’s presentation
Professor Dennis Hayes presentation
Dr Keith Turvey’s presentation
Professor Richard Hall’s presentation
Tim Rudd’s Provocation Paper for the Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology Event: Schooling Technologies, Techno-romanticism and False Promise: The Ideological Construction of Educational Technologies and the Paucity of Critical Perspectives (click on ‘scribd’ icon bottom right for full view).
Richard Hall’s Provocation Paper for the Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology Event. The University, Technology and Co-operation (click on ‘scribd’ icon bottom right for full view).
Carlo Perrotta’s Provocation Paper for the Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology Event: Critically Analysing he MOOC Phenomenon (click on ‘scribd’ icon bottom right for full view).
See also Carlo Perrotta’s article, ‘Imperatives and Alibis: Fascism and the Rhetoric of Educational Innovation’, in HYBRID PEDAGOGY: A Digital Journal of Learning, Teaching, and Technology.
Keith Turvey’s Provocation Paper for the ‘Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology’ Event: Designing and Reconstructing the Narrative of Technology Enhanced Learning (click on ‘scribd’ icon bottom right for full view).
Rethinking Educational Technology Scenarios
This publication contains a set of scenarios that present ‘alternative’ visions of educational technology. The scenarios seek to stimulate debate and discussion around how educational technology might be socially constructed ‘otherwise’ and toward wider ‘social good’.
Aimed at a general audience, including teachers, students and researchers, they intend to challenge existing thinking about the ways technology is used and distributed, and pose questions regarding the purpose of education and educational technology, and the wider ideological influences underpinning them.
Scenario authors include: Richard Hall, David Holmes, Peter Humphreys, Sal Mckeown, Carlo Perrotta, Jonathan Breeze & Tim Rudd, with illustrations provided by Marisa Harlington, and University of Brighton students Lawrence Dodgson, Stephanie Hope & Emma Strauss.
The scenarios are one of several many outputs arising from a University of Brighton Research Grant focusing on ‘Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology’, more of which can be seen here.
Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology: Recent papers
Dr Tim Rudd has recently had two papers published focussing on the political and ideological construction of educational technology. In the first, he offers a critical analysis of New Labour’s educational technology policies, highlighting some of the vested interests behind policy developments, the myth of ‘transformation’ heralded in the discourse, and the structural barriers to effective utilisation of technology in the classroom. The paper is one of many in an book focussing on the politics of education, edited by Neil Selwyn and Keri Facer, more details of which can be found here.
Rudd, T. (2013). ‘The Buying and Selling of the Transformation Fallacy. A Critique of New Labour’s Educational Technology Policies’. In N. Selwyn and K. Facer, The Politics of Educational Technology: Conflicts, Controversies, and Connections. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-1-137-03197-6, ISBN10: 1-137-03197-2
The second paper offers a similarly critical account of the Conservative led coalition Government’s educational technology policies. He highlights that these are broadly ideological in nature, informed by spurious evidence and influenced by vested interests. It is argued that these policies are designed to support a wider neo liberal ideology supporting greater privatisation and an increasingly business orientated education system.
Rudd, T. (2013). ‘The Ideological Construction of a New Form of Digital Exclusion: Computer Science as Latin or Total Deus Ex Machina?’ Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Volume 11, Number 3 (July 13). ISSN 1740-2743
Re-addressing Challenges Facing Young People: New and Emerging Technologies for Education and Employment
Dr Tim Rudd recently produced an ‘insight paper’ as a stimulus piece for The Nominet Trust, ‘Re-addressing the Challenges Facing Young People: New and Emerging Technologies for Education and Employment’. It forms part of a much wider programme of work to seek out and promote imaginative uses of digital technology that will have a profound impact on the future life chances of young people.
The insight paper aims to stimulate thinking and raise questions that may inspire new debates, approaches, tools and technologies to better address the multiple challenges, needs and issues facing young people, particularly those who are out of work or not in education or training (NEETs). In the paper, it is highlighted that increasingly powerful new technologies offer opportunities to help address challenges, create new information sources, networks, communities and social interaction. However, exploiting technology to tackle social issues and empower disadvantaged groups unfortunately still remains significantly underexplored and under-exploited. The current uncertain socio-economic climate and related social and demographic changes present a context that demands new and innovative thinking that challenges existing assumptions and is not constrained by our past in order to help meet the needs and challenges young people face.
The report can be found here
You can find out more about The Nominet Trust, the work they do and things they support, including their current ‘Tech for Good Challenge’ here