281 research outputs found

    INFRASTRUCTURING IN THE FUTURE SCHOOL CASE - INVOLVING BOTH ADULTS AND CHILDREN

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    Information infrastructure building efforts have entered both research literature and the practice of utilizing information and communication technology (ICT) in organizations as well as in our everyday life. The concept of infrastructuring has also challenged the traditional, project-based assumptions of information systems (IS) development. This study will explore infrastructuring within the educational network of a Finnish city. The study examines infrastructuring in-depth in a novel context, and includes an unusual group of participants: children that have so far been almost entirely neglected in IS research. A research framework of nexus analysis, combining both qualitative and participatory research approaches, was utilized for exploring infrastructuring in this Future School case. The study characterizes a multitude of actors, both adults and children, their various activities, and the versatility of outcomes involved. This study addresses both ˜design for use before use´ and ˜design in use´ carried out by teachers and pupils. In addition, the existence of certain kinds of resonance and design-for-design-in-use activities is revealed. The study expands infrastructuring to concern both pedagogical, architectural, and interior design, as well as enabling issus; the study reveals that when creating novel learning environments, all these aspects may play a role together with ICT. \ \ Keywords: Infrastructuring, Information Infrastructure, Participation, Children

    How Teachers Participate in the Infrastructuring of an Educational Network

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    The evolution of Digital technologies has changed the ways in which people interact with and through technologies. Despite longstanding investment in technical and pedagogical infrastructure, schools vary greatly in the degree to which they have digitalized. New curricula in Finland have put additional pressure on education to meet the goals set for learning in the 21st century. In information systems (IS) research, digitalization increases an interest for understanding contemporary IS projects as infrastructuring. In this study, we examine how teachers as influential actors in transforming their environment participated in shaping the infrastructuring of the educational network of a Finnish city. A nexus analysis of teachers’ interviews revealed three main discourses. The first discourse depicted teachers balancing between traditional and new educational solutions when aligning their pedagogy-driven practices with curriculum objectives. The second discourse concerned infrastructuring activities for establishing pedagogical ICT use successfully. The third discourse highlighted practices that teachers used to share resources as an organizational-balancing effort. The results reveal tensions between collegiality and leadership, submissive and empowered agency, and discontinuities and anticipation in ensuring continuity in infrastructuring. We discuss implications for organizing in-service training and developing local practices as contributing to infrastructuring in the educational network

    Infrastructuring Aid: Materializing Social Protection in Northern Kenya

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    In numerous African countries, humanitarian and development organizations - as well as governments - are expanding expenditures on social protection schemes as a means of poverty alleviation. These initiatives, which typically provide small cash grants to poor households, are often considered particularly agreeable for the simplicity of their administration and the feasibility of their implementation. This paper examines the background work required to deploy social protection in one especially remote area: the margins of postcolonial Kenya. Specifically, it documents the often-overlooked social and technical construction of the infrastructure necessary so that cash transfers may function with the ease and simplicity for which they are commended. Attention to the practice of 'infrastructuring' offers insights into the tensions and politics of what is rapidly becoming a key form of transnational governance in the global south, especially the way in which market-based means and humanitarian ethics overlap

    Abelhas, drones e outras Coisas no espaço público: fazendo estratégias na cidade

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    In this article we explore some emerging strategizing practices that citizens use for the development of their immediate urban fabric. We make use of our experiences and engagements with two citizen-driven initiatives in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The first case attempts to rethink uses and actors of public space by creating viable conditions for the emergence of urban gardening in public spaces. The second initiative is engaged in a political discussion of the boundaries of participation, cultural appropriation and ownership of city space. We discuss and reflectively analyze some of their strategizing practices, as forms of infrastructuring, commoning and patchworking. The cases shed light on forms of designing that are enacted collectively through mobilizing particular concerns and caring approaches. We conclude by highlighting aspects made visible in the cases that can give a sense of direction for exercising forms of continuous, open-ended design that are attentive to the collective construction of Things.Keywords: city-making, citizen participation, infrastructuring, patchworking, commoning.Neste artigo, exploramos algumas práticas estratégicas emergentes que os cidadãos utilizam para o desenvolvimento do tecido urbano ao seu redor. Usamos nossas experiências e engajamento em duas iniciativas lideradas pelos cidadãos em Helsinki, capital da Finlândia. O primeiro caso é relativo às tentativas de repensar os usos e os atores do espaço público através da criação das condições de viabilidade para o surgimento de jardinagem urbana em espaços públicos. A segunda iniciativa faz parte de uma discussão política dos limites de participação, apropriação cultural e do espaço da cidade. Discutimos e analisamos algumas de suas práticas estratégicas, como formas de infraestrutura, commoning e patchworking. Os casos lançam luz sobre as formas de fazer design que são realizadas coletivamente através da mobilização em torno de preocupações específicas e por meio de abordagens de cuidado. Concluímos destacando aspectos tornados visíveis nos casos que podem indicar um caminho para desenvolver processos de design contínuos, open-ended que focam na construção coletiva das Coisas.Palavras-chave: city-making, participação cidadã, infraestruturação, patchworking, commoning

    Infrastructuring Aid: Materializing Social Protection in Northern Kenya (WP 333)

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    In numerous African countries, humanitarian and development organizations—as well as governments—are expanding expenditures on social protection schemes as a means of poverty alleviation. These initiatives, which typically provide small cash grants to poor households, are often considered particularly agreeable for the simplicity of their administration and the feasibility of their implementation. This paper examines the background work required to deploy social protection in one especially remote area: the margins of postcolonial Kenya. Specifically, it documents the often-overlooked social and technical construction of the infrastructure necessary so that cash transfers may function with the ease and simplicity for which they are commended. Attention to the practice of ‘infrastructuring’ offers insights into the tensions and politics of what is rapidly becoming a key form of transnational governance in the global south, especially the way in which market-based means and humanitarian ethics overlap

    Real Work with Real Consequences: Enlisting Community Energy Engineering as an Approach to Envisioning Engineering in Context

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    This study describes an illustrative case study from a year-round program that positions middle and high school youth to explore the social value of energy systems in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods. Designed to center existing youth assets, interests and values, Community Energy Engineering (CEE) frames engineering as a tool that students can enlist in order to understand and interrogate their local socio-energy system while also acting to transform it. CEE partners with Title 1 schools in Latino/a neighborhoods in the U.S. southwest. CEE situates youth community-based solar energy innovation projects as consequential, evolving in and with historically contingent engineering practices, and shaping and shaped by interactions across multiple contexts. We present our analysis of an asset-based approach to pre-college energy engineering education by following an exemplary project team across 15 months of programming. We used critical design ethnography to address the research question: How do community-centered energy engineering projects organize opportunities for productive disciplinary engagement and consequential learning? Findings are presented through the endogenous, first-person accounts of five youth as they participated in their project, and as they reflected on their participation during interviews. We consider connections to a wider array of cases reported using a sociocultural theoretical perspective on asset-based approaches to pre-college engineering education. We discuss these connections in relation to reciprocity as an asset-based approach to ingenuity and care, as well as two overarching design principles that emerged: (a) real work with real consequences and (b) everyone a learner, everyone a contributor

    Infrastructuring for cultural commons

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    In this doctoral dissertation, I inquire into the ways in which Participatory Design (PD) and digital design endeavors can contribute to wider public access to, and use of, digital cultural heritage. I advocate for an approach according to which digital cultural heritage is arranged and understood as cultural commons, and for more collaborative modes of social care for and governance of the commons. In addition to the empirically grounded findings and proposals contained in six individual research articles, I develop a theoretical framework that combines scholarship on Information Infrastructures, Commons and PD. Against this framework I interrogate how the information infrastructures and conditions that surround digital cultural heritage can be active in constructing and contributing to cultural commons. While doing this, I draw attention to the gap that exists between on the one hand official institutional digital cultural heritage collections, systems and practices, and on the other hand the digital platforms and practices through which everyday people create, curate and share digital cultural works. In order to understand how to critically and productively bridge this gap, I present insights gained from conducting three design research cases that engage both cultural heritage institutions and everyday media users. Building upon this empirical work, and latching on to scholarship on the notion of infrastructuring, I propose four infrastructuring strategies for cultural commons: probing and building upon the installed base, stimulating and simulating design and use through gateways, producing and pooling shared resources, and, lastly, fostering and shaping a commons culture that supports commoning. In exploring these strategies, I map the territory between commons and infrastructuring, and connect these notions to the PD tradition. I do so to sketch the design principles for a design orientation, commons design. I assert that these principles can be useful for advancing PD, and can inform future initiatives, aid in identifying infrastructural challenges, and in finding and confirming an orientation to participatory design activities. Drawing on my practical design work, I discuss requirements for professional designers operating on commons frameworks and with collective action. By doing this, my dissertation not only breaks new theoretical ground through advancing theoretical considerations relevant to contemporary design research, especially the field of PD, but also contributes practical implications useful for professional digital media design practice, especially for designers working in the fields of digital culture and cultural heritage

    Becoming Donor-Conceived

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    While it has been argued that anonymity in gamete donation has been brought to an end by legal changes and technological developments, Amelie Baumann suggests that this is in fact still in transformation. By focusing on the narratives of those who were conceived with anonymously donated gametes in the UK and Germany, she examines this transformative process and the role which donor-conceived persons play in it. This book shows that it is not someone's decision to procreate that turns »being donor-conceived« into a meaningful categorisation. Rather, kinship knowledge gets activated by the donor-conceived in specific ways for »being donor-conceived« to become a powerful identification

    Design for social sustainability. A reflection on the role of the physical realm in facilitating community co-design

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    Understanding the environmental conditions that shape the physical support for developing social sustainability requires analysing the symbiotic relationship of people and place. Place is considered an essential aspect in shaping social identity, identification and cohesion. Thus, this paper explores the role of the physical realm in enabling co-design practices within community initiatives. It outlines two PhD research projects focused on strengthening community engagement using co-design approaches. It evidences its findings analysing two different settings. Firstly, a PhD research project exploring the mutual influences between spatial and service design also through the investigation of public spaces as platforms for strategic interventions with experimentations in the urban fabric of Milan (Italy). Secondly, a doctoral research exploring the value of community co-design on rural areas in the Highlands and Islands (Scotland) associated with Leapfrog, a three-year-funded project by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Conducted by two different research teams, we analyse to what extent participatory processes can strengthen communities and their identities, as well as reflecting on place-based approaches for design strategies of territories
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