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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Audrey Watters's main point in this transcript is to "recognize the incredible and awful trauma that everyone has experienced, that many are still experiencing in many parts of the world." There's no doubt about that, and I know her own world has been wrecked by tragedy this year, and I am truly sympathetic. The other thing she wants to say is that "we know ed-tech is unlikely to ameliorate any of this, and is just as likely to make things worse." Indeed, "ed-tech is not even the right question." Even if we could get the technology working properly, the problem is that too much of it is based on "carceral pedagogy — that is, a pedagogy that draws on beliefs and practices that echo those of prisons — surveillance, punishment, and too often literal incarceration." This, she writes, is "the antithesis of education as a practice of freedom. And carceral pedagogy is deeply traumatizing."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 11:55 a.m.

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