Critical Digital Pedagogy

I loved the readings and the podcast for this session.

The prompts took a moment for me to relate to; as I think that a critical stance to technology is at the core of my course. Yet, I use this example of me using “the digital” in a non-banking way (cf. Freire’s banking model on education).

In my smaller course, my students are tasked with procuring their own reading material for class according to parameters I set out. (Peer reviewed, in HCI, on the topic of…..).

The students come to class having read different articles and (obviously) with different backgrounds and perspectives. Through having read different texts, the students are empowered in their knowledge that they (and only they) are able to contribute a specific and new piece of knowledge to the class.

The students need to find themselves in a position of confidence and a space of trust in themselves to do that.

I achieve this by beginning the course with a class on Haraway and the Cyborg manifesto. This text is explicitly teaching the reader to be assertive and have agency with their teaching and understanding and their voice.

I think this is a type of using “the digital” as a resource in teaching that undermines the concept of “baking the student” (the student as empty vessel). It forces the student to be an agent, rater than an empty canvas.