Week Review 2
Three aspects have kept me busy this week:
Equality: We are living in a time of multiple inequalities, despite being both biologically and philosophically equal (to a sufficient degree).
Humanism: Traditional Humanism has come under criticism and is rightly refused. Post Humanism, Critical Post Humanism and Transhumanism (see Bayne’s paper on „What’s the matter with…) do however not pose a favourable alternative, as they shift the focus away from human agency by closely intertwining the human and the non-human (mostly technology).
Teaching: Learning can only be thought of in connection with something we do learn, which is seen and constituted in concrete action (see Macleod’s position paper on Human Cognition). Hence teaching as the art of enabling the individual to learn can not be thought of as a purely theoretical attempt, but is consequently tied to future concrete action.
If we add to this the vast field of technology, digital technology and digital education, we as digital educators are presented with a very concrete question: Do we want to study and teach, so that we and our students learn to take concrete actions? Or do we not?
I hashtagged consequently in one of my Tweets: No digital without social.
The social means
– acting to abolish existing inequalities.
– developing a modern Humanism, which puts the human first.
– studying and teaching ways to help us achieve this.
– by putting our emphasis on the human and human agency, always thinking digital and(!) social, we might put ourselves into a position, in which we can find new ways to address the aspects mentioned above.
