Lo‐tech tools as episteme: rethinking student engagement in the writing process and beyond

In this paper, five teacher‐scholars describe pedagogical inquiry into the use of ‘lo‐tech’ tools and what we discovered about the affordances of these tools. These include but are not limited to technologies like sticky notes that help students to organize written thoughts and physically move them around, crayons that allow students to highlight, trace, and categorize different types of thoughts on their paper, and index cards that they can use in a variety of interactive ways for their own writing and to write collaboratively. We found that the use of lo‐tech tools complemented our work with digital technology, engaging the kinesthetic learners in our classrooms and encouraging a spirit of play in students and teachers alike. We also discuss how teachers can encourage the use of lo‐tech tools epistemologically to help students process information, create knowledge, and to come to their own understandings or demonstrate understandings of course content ‐ with no product in mind other than knowledge‐making

The Economics of Bouncy Balls (Chapter in Just Moms: Conveying Justice in an Unjust World)

Excerpt: The fight ignites. One minute, my sons are chattering nonsense in the car\u27s back seat, and the next, I can hear the thwack of fist against winter coat, then a barrage of retaliatory hits. Both boys stretch arms across the Subaru, seatbelts restraining them from a full-on war. Before I can even slow the car to intervene, Benjamin and Samuel are crying, each injured by flying limbs, jabs to the eye, well-placed kicks. What in the world? I speak into the rearview mirror, guiding my car to the curb. What in the heck is going on back there? (I may not say heck. I don\u27t know.) Turning into the darkened back seat, I can just barely see my sobbing sevenyear- aids, holding their wounds. Discarded between them is the subject of their battle: a broken paddle-ball game, sold for less than a dollar at any discount store

Scenes From A Friendly\u27s Restaurant

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Somehow, when you observe people all your life, it becomes a sort of art. Each individual is distinctly different, a mystery within itself. What intrigues me though is looking for their story: where are they going, who are they looking for, what troubles them--the list is endless. If I possessed the ability to look into each person\u27s mind I would block it out. For the whole purpose of observing others is to use your imagination, make up a story, add other characters--there are countless possibilities. Jason, a close friend of mine, is an excellent player. His mind is in constant overdrive. He has the ability to recite people\u27s lives as if they personally handed him the script

Product placement

The exhibition brought together a range of artists and product designers who share an interest in how objects are made, displayed / marketed and sold in contemporary culture. The exhibition questioned issues surrounding the production, technology and marketing of commodities, but on a wider scale, how (and by whom) participation in consumer activity is structured or framed. Each artist and product designer was ‘paired’ in order to produce a new object, multiple or edition for exhibition. Via this cross-disciplinary collaboration, new working processes were to be found and explored, as well as allowing a re-appraisal of the conceptual elements of their practices. The resulting polymorphic objects (often neither product or artwork) were placed in an installation developed for the exhibition. Through an architectural re-working of the gallery, the space becomes a parody of 'catalogue' stores - mimicking their structure of experience with catalogue kiosks, service point (with uniformed assistant) and market hall/storage space. Merging this structure into the space intended to amplify the functional similarities and behavioral prompts of gallery, retail and warehouse spaces

Ecology, intellectual property and a five point plan for a sustainable public domain?

At the turn of the century, Harvard evolutionary biologist and all round science polymath Edward O. Wilson wrote that more that 99% of the world's biodiversity was unknown and that we should rectify that state of affairs, since our ignorance was contributing to the destruction of the environment. He outlined a five point plan for doing this. 1. Comprehensively survey the world's flora and fauna. This will need a large but finite team of professionals. 2. Create biological wealth e.g. through pharmaceutical prospecting of indigenous plants. Assigning economic value to biodiversity (e.g. as a source of material wealth as food or medicines or leisure amenities) is a key way to encourage its preservation. 3. Promote sustainable development i.e. 'development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. 4. Save what remains i.e. being realistic we are not going to halt environmental degradation overnight. 5. Restore the wild lands e.g. through designating large areas of land as natural reserves like Costa Rica's 50,000-hectare Guanacaste National Park. Could we conceive of a parallel five point plan for protecting the global information store that is the public domain, the diversity of which is potentially endangered by what James Boyle so eloquently argues is a second enclosure movement

Digital Finger Painting: A Qualitative Exploration of the Tablet Computer and its Artistic Implications in an Early Childhood Setting

The purpose of this study was to better understand the implications of the tablet computer for learning and, specifically, in the art classroom. A qualitative study was designed following grounded theory measures for data analysis in order to explore timely questions regarding the tablet computer and how young children react to such technology as a drawing tool. An early childhood center was accessed for this research, and 30 children between the ages of three and five years old consented to participate. Four educators and 35 parents were also enlisted in an effort to elicit substantive perspectives regarding the tablet and its artistic potential. Children were observed as they drew on an iPad® tablet and digital drawings created were compared to those made with crayons on paper. Additionally, collaborative art making with the tablet computer was encouraged, and children completed digital drawings in pairs. Semi-structured interviews shed light on what children enjoyed about the tablet computer as well as what they disliked about the technology. Parent and educator perceptions regarding the tablet computer as a learning and drawing tool were gathered through brief survey data and one-on-one interviews. Findings have been detailed through participants’ stories and documented thematically

Collaborative Learning

Professors and students learn together in the lab, at the fire station, behind a camera. A look at six projects that combine faculty and student learning in creative and challenging ways

'We’re just gonna scribble it': The affective and social work of destruction in children’s art-making with different semiotic resources

In this paper I explore children’s destruction of their artwork as it occurs on paper or digitally via the interactive whiteboard (IWB). Social semiotics offers a theoretical lens for understanding children’s acts of destruction as meaningful and how different semiotic resources shape the meaning-making involved in destruction differently. To explore this further, I consider two episodes of art-making: firstly, an episode of child-parent art-making that ended in the five year old child scribbling over a drawing on paper with a black crayon, and secondly, an episode of a five year old child using touch to cover over the drawing she had made on the classroom IWB during free-flow activity time. A comparison between these two episodes is used to explore how digital and paper-based semiotic resources may impact differently on the experience of destruction and the affective and relational work that it can achieve