Hybrid Pedagogy: Principles of learning in the digital age

Summary

Hybrid Pedagogy: Principals of Learning in the Digital Age

From <http://schuyleresprit.com/his115/?page_id=12>

Bill of rights:

  1. The right to access
  2. The right to privacy
  3. The right to create public knowledge
  4. The right to own one's personal data and intellectual property
  5. The right to have financial transparency
  6. The right to pedagogical transparency
  7. The right to quality and care
  8. The right to have great teachers
  9. The right to be teachers

Principles:

  1. Global Contribution
  2. Value
  3. Flexibility
  4. Hybrid Learning
  5. Persistence
  6. Innovation
  7. Formative  Assessment
  8. Experimentation
  9. Civility
  10. Play

Reflection

I was not aware of the principles of learning in the digital age before reading this article. However, I had a general understanding of most of the rights concerning digital learning. I now have a better understanding of the aims that digital learning was created to achieve.

I think that by learning in the digital age, a larger number of people have access to education and many more opportunities are being unlocked. I also believe that the bill of rights places a blanket of safety and comfort over learning digitally.

Since I am currently a student learning in the digital age, I have witnessed and experienced these principles and rights being practiced in my daily life. For example, Global Contribution: As students, we are allowed to share what we have learned and apply that knowledge in ways that can educate others. This also ties in with the right to be teachers.

I believe that now that I know the principles of learning digitally, I will put more effort into implementing these in my daily life as a student.

Overall, I feel grateful that I can utilize the technology available in this digital age to aid me in my educational advancement.

Emily Drabinski: "Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race"

Summary

Emily Drabinski, “Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race“

From <http://schuyleresprit.com/his115/?page_id=12>

  • Infrastructure is created by people and therefore embeds and reflects the values of the people who created it.
  • Infrastructure does not work equally well for each of us.
    • What is felt as a disruption changes depending on the social and political position  occupied by a given person.
  • Robert Moses and his transformation of NYC through his expressways
    • Such systems  reveal the ways that power and privilege are normalized such that they extend and consolidate patriarchy, white supremacy, and wealth inequality.
    • More often, such infrastructures are left unexamined.
    • They facilitate normal life, and the inequities that are sustained by them are not seen at all.
  • Noble argues instead that the web is instead a machine of oppression, a set of “digital decisions” that “reinforce oppressive social relationships and enact new modes of racial profiling.”
  • Nothing about internet search and retrieval is politically neutral.
    • Image searches for “gorilla” turn up photos of African-American people.
    • Looking for “black teenagers” returns police mug shots.
    • Searching “professional hairstyles” returns images of white women wearing ponytails and French braids while “unprofessional hairstyles” features black women.
    • This parallels extended histories of racist white representations of blackness, and black femininity in particular.
  • There is nothing benign about encoding white supremacy in Google’s search algorithm.
  • Noble offers two solutions.
    • A call for Google and other Silicon Valley companies whose code invisibly structures so much of contemporary life to hire people who understand how race and gender and other categories of social difference function in the world to produce different life experiences for different people.
    • An appeal to the state in service to the public good.

Reflection

This article made me think more deeply about big search and retrieval companies like Google, the code used to make their search engines, and the programmers who write the code.

I think that there are a lot of controversial truths in this article that needs to be discussed more.

I haven't noticed or observed any racist results when I search on the internet, which might've been due to my lack of awareness. Also, since casual racism is so normalized in this day and age, mostly seen in jokes or memes, I've gotten used to it and therefore I end up overlooking these details.

Now that I am aware of this information, I'll be more observant whilst searching on the internet so that I'll be able to report racist results and spread awareness on this topic.

The most impactful sentence in the article to me was the very first which stated: "INFRASTRUCTURE IS CREATED by people and therefore embeds and reflects the values of the people who create it".

Elijah Meeks: An Introduction to Digital Humanities

Summary

Elijah Meeks, An Introduction to Digital Humanities

From <http://schuyleresprit.com/his115/?page_id=12>

What is digital humanities?

  • Bringing computational methods to bear on traditional humanities scholarship.
  • Taking tools built by warmongers, oil companies, spy agencies & investment bankers and using them to study literature, philosophy, history, culture and the classics.
  • Comes from a basis of criticism and critical inquiry.
    • An agonistic and dialectical engagement with a thing.
      • Thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
      • Going back and fourth with examining a thing.
  • Critical inquiry + Computational methods +  Fan culture + Digital Object
    • Disrupt hacker culture
    • Data journalism
    • Wikipedia & TVTropes
    • New Media
      • Software studies
      • Neo-

Reflection

Honestly, before watching this video, I could not put together a suitable, specific definition of 'Digital Humanities'. I now have a better understanding of this term and can start piecing together this puzzle called 'Digital Humanities' in my mind, slowly getting closer to seeing and understanding the whole picture.

I believe that as technology improves and advances, digital humanities would always be changing on a surface level, but will always have its core principles.