Lines of Flight: Engaging #EdTech’s Attentional Gravity
Gregory Zobel, Western Oregon University
When facing today’s complex education and technology economies, what can people of conscience do to assert and grow our compassionate practice? Employing fragments from Gilles Deleuze, Audrey Watters, Herbert Marcuse, and Angela Davis, the keynote explores how critical and radical philosophies offer multiple generative paths for educators to ground pedagogy and practice. In addition to resisting structural oppressions’ immense gravity, philosophy driven practice can support autonomous learning, defy surveillance economies, and provide education and learning more appropriate to the human condition.
To address this question in a concrete manner, this keynote explores three seemingly disparate topics:
- The Fortnite phenomenon (Battle Royale genre and live streaming on Twitch or Mixer) and potential educational impacts;
- Educators’ technology selection processes for teaching, learning, and professional development;
- Philosophy’s role in helping solve practical problems in teaching and learning.
About Gregory Zobel (GZ)
Gregory Zobel (gz) is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Western Oregon University. He is trained in technical communication, usability, rhetoric, and composition. His interests range from accessibility and closed captions to OERs to video game research. Outside of work, GZ has two Great Danes, collects signed first editions, and reads science fiction. Central to his relationship with technology, in and out of work, is the demand that technology must be ethical and serve people, not power, first.