Screen capture programs were always beyond me until this week. I understood the idea and how it could be useful, but I never found it very meaningful in a world where you can display a screen for a class to show your actions online, or trust that youth will figure out what they need to do on their own in any given online platform. Even if students were to miss explanations, the social aspect of a classroom creates space for sharing the instruction amongst students. The shift to online learning that has been required under the Covid-19 pandemic however has certainly shown the merit of having screen capture as a tool for asynchronous demonstrations of online tasks. It has also made more visible the needs of students that were going unmet by teachers not preparing instruction and material that can be accessed in an asynchronous manner using a range of mediums to help students understand.
[I have been trying to insert a ScreenCastify here to demonstrate what its value is, however I have been unable convince my antivirus that it is not trying to steal everything off my computer and as such it will not run for me. I was able to run H5P though!]
I find the SAMR model of technological integration quite useful to address this. Its taxonomy is simple and lends itself to critical questions not just around what kinds of technology can be integrated and how, but whether or not one even needs to or indeed should integrate it into their classroom for whatever reason. As a tool, substation, augmentation, and modification lean into principles of universal design that help meet the needs of everyone by creating a more accessible classroom, content, and method for delivery. Redefinition however needs more critical engagement. Though it is certainly true that using particular platforms or applications will allow for an ease of communication and engagement with distant or different topics or communities, ‘redefining’ education through the use of technological integration comes with hidden social relations.
Marx argues that technological development both conditions social relationships and is one in itself.[1] What this means is that while the use of different communication devices or technologies (for example – though Marx focused on means of material production rather than means of social reproduction) help create new social relationships between people, they also condition the way those form because they are the material form of a social relationship themselves between their users, and the owners of those applications and their material interests. For this reason, when looking at technological integration in the classroom we, with our students, also need to carefully explore and critique the ways in which those technologies encourage us to engage in learning. What subtle aspects of the application force us to use particular forms of analysis? What restraints in social, cultural, or political expression does the form of technological implicitly hold us in? What ideological presumptions are embedded in the ways it functions and the ways we are able to use it?
Engaging with these critical questions is how we build strong students that can unearth the buried social relationships behind our material world. Uncovering these, and interrogating their formation and justness, is vital to using technological developments towards collective liberation.
[1] Marx, Karl, Capital, Volume 1, Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin Books, 1976,