“Wherever You Go, You Will Be a Polis”: Spatial Practices and Political Education in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Discussions

The Marginal Syllabus: Educator Learning and Web Annotation Across Sociopolitical Texts and Contexts

“…Recent research about learning technologies has detailed how the use of particular tools, within designed learning environments, can encourage political dimensions of talk, even when such "talk" primarily comprises digital writing. Slakmon and Schwarz's (2017) study of online argumentative discussion found that "computerized tools that materialize discussions may function as promoters of political education… [virtual] space becomes a place in which students exercise power over each other. They assert political agency, practice power, and produce spaces of appearance" (p. 214).…”

“…Specifically, we theorize such practice in reference to perspectives on intertextuality and we present a study of educators' learning as mediated by open web annotation (OWA) among sociopolitical texts and contexts. In an era when both classrooms and educational technologies are frequently a locus of surveillance and control -sites, it can be argued, where "dominant ideologies are produced" (Apple, 1995, p. 14) -we are especially concerned with participation structures that encourage political dimensions of talk (e.g., Slakmon & Schwarz, 2017), how educators engage in such discourse, and the ways in which educator involvement in dialogic space (Wegerif, 2007) becomes relevant to classroom teaching and learning. The efforts reported in this chapter are directed to both inquiry and change; we present a case study of a social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010) predicated upon the need to create and maintain open learning contexts within which educators can exercise political agency through dialogue, question dominant schooling narratives, and critique inequitable educational practices.…”

Designing a Social Learning Analytics Tool for Open Annotation and Collaborative Learning

“…Learning processes, like collaboration and meaning-making, may be understood as group-level processes (Stahl, 2017) rather than as an indicator of individual accomplishment. Moreover, because learning is situated in both everyday and designed contexts, groups rely upon their use of tools, shared resources, and distributed cognition to engage in joint activity (e.g., Slakmon & Schwarz, 2017). From this perspective, OFDL is conceived of as access to and participation in authentic social activity among and across networks comprised of people, shared technologies, and material and ideational resources that enable negotiation, meaning-making, and knowledge construction (e.g., Bali & Caines, 2018;West-Puckett, Smith, Cantrill, & Zamora, 2018).…”