The Cultural Deconstruction of Racism: Education and Multiculturalism

In this paper I examine attempts at the deconstruction of racism in the con-temporary Australian context, particularly in the fields of education and multicultural policy and practice. By this, I mean deconstruction not only in terms of the epistemological explanation of racism and multiculturalism in schools, but also the practical imperatives arising from analysis, which include an attempt to dismantle racism. What I am referring to then is a dual analytical and interventionist project which is struggling to make its mark. I choose the areas of multiculturalism and education for two reasons. First, schooling in Australia is a compulsory, universal experience and therefore an important site for examination, both as the reflection and reflector of processes of socialisation. Second, the questions of so-called 'race' and 'race relations' as introduced through multiculturalism, although misshapen and problematic, have made their most widespread inroads into education, albeit often only obliquely through the concepts of culture and ethnicity

El papel de Internet en las cambiantes ecologías del conocimiento

To a greater extent than is often acknowledged, the modern scientific and university-based knowledge system is a creature of the society of the printing press. Until the turn of the twentyfirst century, print was the medium of scholarly communication. Then, quite suddenly at the turn of the twenty-first century, digital text begins to displace print as the primary means of access to the knowledge of academicians. This article explores some of the consequences of this change. To what extent do digital technologies of representation and communication reproduce the knowledge systems of the half-millennium long history of the modern university or do they disrupt and transform them? To answer this question, this article will explore key aspects of contemporary transformations, not just in the textual forms of digital representation, but the emerging social forms that digitisation reflects, affords and supports. This we call the “social web”, a term we use to describe the kinds of relationships to knowledge and culture that are emerging in the era of pervasively interconnected computing. What, then, are the impacts and potentials of these changes on the processes of formation of new knowledge?Más allá de lo que suele admitirse, el moderno sistema de conocimiento científico y universitario es una creación de la sociedad de la imprenta. Antes de llegar el siglo XXI, la imprenta era el canal de comunicación académica. Entonces, de manera bastante repentina con el cambio de siglo, los textos digitales empezaron a sustituir a la imprenta como el medio principal por el que los académicos acceden al conocimiento. Este artículo analiza algunas de las consecuencias de este cambio. ¿Hasta qué punto las tecnologías digitales de representación y comunicación reproducen los sistemas de conocimiento utilizados en el último medio milenio de historia de la moderna universidad? ¿O quizás la interrumpen y la transforman? Para responder a esta pregunta, este artículo explora aspectos clave de las transformaciones contemporáneas, no sólo en la forma textual de las representaciones digitales, sino también la emergencia de formas sociales que la digitalización refleja, permite y apoya. A esto llamamos la “web social”, una expresión que utilizamos para describir el tipo de relaciones con el conocimiento y la cultura que está emergiendo en esta era dominada por la interconexión computacional. ¿Cuáles son entonces los impactos y el potencial de estos cambios sobre los procesos de formación de nuevo conocimiento

Literacies

With the rise of new technologies and media, the way we communicate is rapidly changing. Literacies provides a comprehensive introduction to literacy pedagogy within today's new media environment. It focuses not only on reading and writing, but also on other modes of communication, including oral, visual, audio, gestural and spatial. This focus is designed to supplement, not replace, the enduringly important role of alphabetical literacy. Using real-world examples and illustrations, Literacies features the experiences of both teachers and students. It maps a range of methods that teachers can use to help their students develop their capacities to read, write and communicate. It also explores the wide range of literacies and the diversity of socio-cultural settings in today's workplace, public and community settings. With an emphasis on the 'how-to' practicalities of designing literacy learning experiences and assessing learner outcomes, this book is a contemporary and in-depth resource for literacy students

Maximizing learning potential with multimodality : a case study

In today’s increasingly fast-moving digital world, learners are immersed in multimodal online communication environments in their daily life, through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others. This requires educators to reflect the environment in which these learners live, and thus design instructional practices from a multimodal perspective. Multimodality offers new opportunities for digital learners to express themselves, analyze problems and make meaning in multimodal ways as they interpret knowledge differently according to their various educational needs (Kalantzis & Cope, 2015). In this paper we will discuss the significance of integrating multimodality in e-Learning contexts to make meaning and improve learning. The paper will also present a case study of an online course from the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign to show how multimodality works in practice to cater to learner differences by offering a range of activity options and modes of meaning. We will also examine learners’ perceptions of adopting such an approach in the online course. We used survey techniques for data collection and quantitative and qualitative methods for data analysis. Results revealed illuminating insights about the importance of multimodality approach to increase learning potential for digital learners and provided suggestions for future iterations.peer-reviewe

Enriching Online Education through Differentiated Learning

[EN] Online education has been going through numerous transformations as new and innovative technologies influence and shape new e-learning portals. Differentiated e-learning promises to add value and enhance the educational services provided by an academic institution. In this paper we present our online learning model that advocates and endorses differentiated learning as an e-learning affordance that has been facilitated through the development of new learning technologies. We demonstrate how the online portal enables and supports multiple instances whereby differentiated learning is applied and practiced, including through the use of a novel analytics tool that sums up the overall learner effort in one visual. The paper advances the notion of “productive diversity” in learning, replacing the templated sameness characterizing the communicative practices of “didactic pedagogy,” including textbooks, lectures, tests. Today’s computer-mediated, networked learning environments can support differentiated learning on a number of dimensions, where students are able to work at their own pace, choose their own topics within a general disciplinary rubric, and offer each other feedback in such a way that differences in perspective become a valuable resource for learning. The paper concludes by demonstrating a technology that attempts to translate these principles into practice—the CGScholar platform, including the high-level progress visualizations it offers in its learning analytics.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Montebello, M.; Pinheiro, P.; Cope, B.; Kalantzis, M.; Haniya, S.; Tzirides, A.; Amina, T.... (2018). Enriching Online Education through Differentiated Learning. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 489-496. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8019OCS48949

Assessment innovation in higher education by integrating learning analytics

With the rise of social networking sites and the arrival of an open education era characterized by Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs, learning is undergoing a paradigm shift which requires new assessment strategies. The boundaries between what we know, how we know it and the ways we assess and evaluate knowledge in formal and informal settings are now blurred [1], [2]. In these environments, students often interact with one another to produce and reproduce knowledge and transfer it into a new context to reach a mastery level of learning [3]. The massive amount of data being generated by learners makes it easier to assess performance than ever before [4], [5]. Every learner action is logged and factored in as a source of evidence to contribute to the overall learner assessment both from a summative perspective, and also in a formative way where immediate feedback is actionable. The integration of learning analytics tools and machine learning techniques can facilitate the process of assessment. In this paper we present a case study to show how the integration of learning analytics benefited learners and improved their performance in an online educational course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, while also holding them accountable for their own learning. The study utilized a survey method for data collection and quantitative and qualitative data analysis to interpret learners’ experiences after taking the course.peer-reviewe

Sentidos sem fronteiras para uma educação linguística transformadora: translinguagem e transposição na era do significado multimodal e mediado digitalmente em tempos pandêmicos

Digital technologies have reached unimaginable proportions worldwide since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has intensified the use of networks, media and platforms in everyday communication and has led millions of teachers and students to massively to remote teaching. Such social condition forces us to rethink the production of multimodal meanings, so that we can both review concepts related to the field of language studies and to propose terms that can account for this era of digitally mediated multimodal meaning making. Therefore, in this paper, we aim at problematizing the notions of translinguaging and transposition, observing aspects of complementarity between them. Supporting the idea of senses without borders, we go on to present discussions that seek to capture multimodal meanings in their restless fluidity, in order to expand repertoires in Applied Linguistics today.Las tecnologías digitales han alcanzado, a nivel mundial, proporciones inimaginables desde el inicio de la pandemia COVID-19, que ha intensificado el uso de redes, medios y plataformas en la comunicación cotidiana y ha llevado a millones de docentes y estudiantes a migrar en masa a la enseñanza a distancia. Esto nos obliga a repensar la producción de significados multimodales, buscando no solo revisar conceptos relacionados con el estudio del lenguaje, sino también proponer términos que puedan dar cuenta de esta era de construcción de significados multimodal mediada digitalmente. Así, en este artículo problematizamos las nociones de translenguaje y transposición, notando rastros de complementariedad entre ellas. Partiendo de la idea de significados sin fronteras, continuamos presentando discusiones que buscan plasmar significados multimodales en su inquieta fluidez, con el fin de ampliar repertorios en el campo de la lingüística aplicada actual.As tecnologias digitais alcançaram, em nível mundial, proporções inimagináveis desde o início da pandemia de COVID-19, o que tem intensificado o uso de redes, mídias e plataformas na comunicação cotidiana e levado milhões de professores e alunos a migrarem em massa para o ensino remoto. Isso nos força a repensar a produção de sentidos multimodais, procurando não apenas rever conceitos relacionados ao estudo da linguagem, como também propor termos que possam dar conta dessa era de construção de significado multimodal mediado digitalmente. Assim, neste artigo, problematizamos as noções de translinguagem e transposição, observando traços de complementaridade entre ambas. Partindo da ideia de sentidos sem fronteiras, seguimos apresentando discussões que buscam capturar significados multimodais em sua fluidez inquieta, a fim ampliar de repertórios no campo da linguística aplicada na atualidade

Generative AI: Implications and Applications for Education

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 precipitated a panic among some educators while prompting qualified enthusiasm from others. Under the umbrella term Generative AI, ChatGPT is an example of a range of technologies for the delivery of computer-generated text, image, and other digitized media. This paper examines the implications for education of one generative AI technology, chatbots responding from large language models, or C-LLM. It reports on an application of a C-LLM to AI review and assessment of complex student work. In a concluding discussion, the paper explores the intrinsic limits of generative AI, bound as it is to language corpora and their textual representation through binary notation. Within these limits, we suggest the range of emerging and potential applications of Generative AI in education