The voyages of concepts: some critical thoughts on sociotechnical imaginaries and its application in education
I’ve always been a little bit uncertain about the concept of ‘socio-technical imaginaries’.
What critical realism can learn from ANT and speculative realism
It struck me when reading this passage from Sheila Jasanoff’s introduction to Dreamscapes of Modernity how much critical realism can learn from ANT and Speculative Realism with regards to the reality of social construction.
I ain’t waiting for nothing, I just show up to shine
Participants needed for two projects about technology, inequality, and the future of Higher Education
The Post-Pandemic University has issued two new call-outs for participants.
A Song of Goodbye, by Ian McMillan
Farewell, Hand on Bollocks, Farewell, Basil Brush, Farewell, Seaside Drunk and Sea Cow You’re silent and weeping under history’s crush Your name’s your memorial now See you, German Helmet, So long, Tanked Up Ted, Goodbye, Sausage Stuffer and God Your names resonate through the roads of my head The names […]
In a world that has decided that it’s going to lose its mind, be more kind my friends
History’s been leaning on me lately;I can feel the future breathing down my neckAnd all the things I thought were trueWhen I was young, and you were tooTurned out to be brokenAnd I don’t know what comes nextIn a world that has decidedThat it’s going to lose its mindBe more […]
The Somatechnics of Research
I thought this was an intriguing call for papers: Guest edited by Dennis Bruining, Holly Randell-Moon, and Saartje TackThis special issue /Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies –Power /invites contributions that critically examine how researchmethods, methodologies, theories, practices and institutions constitutesomatechnics. Somatechnics here is understood broadly as an approach thebody/ […]
Nietzsche’s theory of dialogue and its implications for educational podcasting
The light we find in these dialogues, the illumination of what was previously in the dark, reflects the refraction of thought which is possible in dyadic interaction. The mutual recognition of the partners in conversation leaves the thought they brought to their interaction turning into something else by virtue of that interaction
Social media exposes the gap between the real company culture and the management fantasy
The ambient visibility which social platforms create within and between organisations will tend to amplify the experience of the gap, as reflections on it (complaints, jokes, rants etc) will circulate more broadly than would otherwise be the case.
How has the pandemic changed internet use in the UK?
There’s lots of insights in this Ofcom study of media use in the UK over the last year. It suggests the pandemic has catalysed a number of changes in how people relate to the internet: There’s a possibility that non-access has shrunk significantly (from 11% to 6% from March 2020 […]
Call for participants: a global dialogue about the digital divide
We’re excited to announce a collaboration with the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) to launch a global dialogue about the digital divide in higher education. The ACU’s new podcast series will explore how the work of universities is changed by the digital revolution and how they can use their position to confront the challenges posed by digital technology. Each episode will feature academics and administrators from around the world debating issues such as social inclusion, digital skills and the future of learning.
I seem to chill the objects that I meant so much to love
The loneliness of knowledge production during a pandemic
We need to recognise the pandemic doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch, but rather will fade through a gradual process of normalising for increasingly large swathes of people alongside an ever present background of resurgent threat. This means that we won’t have a return to ‘normality’, but rather a slow, precarious and contested transition into a new reality.
The civic challenges which come after the pandemic
In the last year we have been forced to disengage from the larger society, with so much of our emotional energy turning towards sustaining close relationships at a distance through the affordances of social platforms. Even when we’re ‘opening up’ the folk epidemiological self-consciousness of the last year can’t be wished away, with wider interactions (accurately) coded as vectors of transmission.
The rook can look left, right, just turns his head. But the knight might rise up, investigate the grid…
I didn’t come looking for loveI didn’t come to pick a fightI didn’t come to wave or take picturesPander to some benefactor, ring on every broken fingerWon’t extend my wings to be clippedI know the culture here is to stay humble but shitIf we all go round bowed heads, button-lippedIf […]
The politics of bad sex
From Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again loc 398: Bad sex emerges from gender norms in which women cannot be equal agents of sexual pursuit, and in which men are entitled to gratification at all costs. It occurs because of inadequacies and inequalities in access to sexual literacy, […]
Teaching as a design science: a few reflections on Diana Laurillard’s approach to digital education
I’ve found the approach of Diana Laurillard extremely helpful for articulating what I’ve tended to think of as user cultures and public pedagogies for social media within higher education. As she puts it on pg 2 of her book of the same name, “education must now begin to drive its […]
The reservoirs and amplifiers of SARS-CoV-2
There’s not an ‘off’ switch to a pandemic but rather a tendency for it to fade as a daily concern for ever larger swathes of the population, in a process of normalisation liable to be interrupted by resurgences which can easily be cast as coming from undesirable elements who are outside the mainstream of society.
The public discussion of higher education and research
I thought THE’s Chris Havergal discussion (viz 21-22 mins) about the effects of social media on the coverage of universities was extremely interesting. This is something I wrote about a few years ago as the shift from the ivory tower to the glass tower which is a metaphor which didn’t […]
Call for Participants – Digital Inequality in Education: Pasts, Presents and Futures
Digital inequalities have long existed within education, both within traditional educational spaces and practice, and within specifically digital interactions. These inequalities have deep roots in extant socio-cultural and socio-economic inequalities, and yet emerge in unique ways through the macro and micro dynamics of education and digital technologies.
