Digital Culture & Education (ISSN: 1836-8301)

Written by: Koutsogiannis Dimitrios, Papantoniou Eleni, Zagka Eleftheria, Matos Anastasios, Nezi Maria & Polkas Lampros

…”At the same time, the digital media contributed to the transformation of the two-day event into a kind of popular spectacle. The conference had several characteristics of an entertainment event, reminding live broadcasts on Greek television where real-time positive or negative comments’ flow is shown for any action taken. Similarly, approving and disapproving comments were recorded on YouTube live streaming, such as: “Visionary! Congratulations!”, “Excellent !!!!!!!!!”, “I think we will hear bitter truths now!”, “You put your voice in our thoughts”.”…

Written by: Liming Liu, Haiming Zhao

…”the student is using a mobile phone for online education on the top of the mountain which can offer him a stable internet signal. A plastic bag of fertilizer has replaced their desk, and they are sat on the ground without a chair. The reporter suggests that interview happened during early March when the weather was relatively chilled, and that the person in the photo does not have any heating equipment”…

Written by: Tyne Daile Sumner & Brian Martin (The University of Melbourne)

…”If, for example, a student deviates (behaviorally, academically, socially) from the guidelines set out by the VLE, there are processes in place to correctively ‘nudge’ them back towards normative standards of engagement; standards which themselves are algorithmically engineered via comparisons across large cohorts to determine pathways that may not produce optimal learning outcomes”…

Written by: Giota Alevizou, The Open University

…”Teachers also have become overstretched with new shifts and routines, learning new tools and everyday online content creation, while they become increasingly anxious about the ways in which they can cater for wellbeing on students and younger children online, especially those with special education and health needs. They even engage more in a kind of COVID-gogy: juggling between catering for the practical needs of vulnerable families and those emotional pragmatic needs of key workers’ children at school, the partial return of some years since early June, and, finally inspiring the children at home through online”…

Written by: Carolina Parreiras & Renata Mourão Macedo

…“we emphasize that the macroscopic data available points to dynamics of exclusion, and the need not to envision the intersection of education and digital technologies as a tableau, but as a relationship marked by differences, subtleties, and inequalities that reflect broader exclusionary and uneven dynamics found in Brazil. Pointing to these mechanisms of inequality is a first step towards carrying out practical and more inclusive actions.”…

Written by: Nathalie Lossec, Nicholas Millar, Mark Curcher and Marko Teräs

…”If UNESCO is not ‘endorsing’ these links, then what are they doing? Recommending? Promoting? Simply posting? This is very confusing to educational administrators and frontline teachers seeking a quick and reliable solution to their current and possibly desperate situation…”

Written by: Marko Teräs, Hanna Teräs, Patricia Arinto, James Brunton, Daryono Daryono, Thirumeni Subramaniam

…"it begs the question, what is quality online learning really like? For example, Finnish teachers were cautious if the management saw online learning merely as a cost-efficient way to run teaching: after you have designed the course it can be reused several times and students can take it almost as a self-study module. Naturally, this is not the case. Instead, similar rules apply than in face to face teaching. Designing and teaching a quality online course takes time and needs well allocated resources. Therefore, the quick solutions developed during the time of COVID-19 crisis might not be the best way forward, but strategic, pedagogically sound development of online learning is still very much needed”…

Written By: Alesia Mickle Moldavan (Fordham University)

…”From an instructor’s perspective, I found that the use of digital education enhanced student participation in the course. I used the asynchronous modules as a flipped instruction model to encourage student engagement by moving lecture and research outside the classroom, thereby, leaving more time for student-led discussions and interactive activities during the synchronous instruction. Thus, the flipped instruction model enabled me to use technology to not only promote learning beyond the classroom but also create an active and collaborative learning environment”…

Written by: D Belluigi (Queen’s University Belfast), L Czerniewicz (University of Cape Town), S Khoo (National University of Ireland, Galway), A Algers (University of Gothenburg), LA Buckley (National University of Ireland, Galway), P Prinsloo (University of South Africa), E Mgqwashu (North West University), C Camps (University of South Wales), C Brink, R Marx (University of Edinburgh), G Wissing (University of the Witwatersrand), N Pallitt (Rhodes University)

…”This article offers reflections-in-action by 21 contributors from 18 institutions whose scholarship and/or practice in academic development (broadly conceived) spans 7 countries. As individuals, we were drawn together through networks of existing concerns about equity. Informed by critical traditions of scholarship and practice largely underpinned by a political ethos of social justice in the micro-curriculum, the thematic analysis in this paper outlines contributors’ critical deliberations during the initial ‘firefighting’ of this ‘watershed moment’ where the ‘equality debate now overlaps much more with the digital transformation debate’”…

Written and edited by: Glenn D’Cruz and Rea Dennis (Deakin University)

… "While most of the usual audio cues drifted in and out of our classes, depending on who was muting their microphones, we found that the camera provided a good sense of whether people were engaged with the class. After a little while, most students became less self-conscious about being on camera: we found it wasn’t difficult to detect enthusiasm or boredom by scanning the ZOOM rectangles”…

Written by: Jana Fedtke & Mohammed Ibahrine

…"There is no simple dichotomy between remote learning and “regular” classes in the physical classroom. These questions and positions show us that we need to continue to rethink the meaning of community, learning, knowledge creation, and our own practices. Reflection of current changes, flexibility, and adaptability are key to being successful in this new context. Whether we see this development as a new opportunity, as ‘technological barbarism,’ or something else, rethinking one’s practices and attitudes enables us to find new ways of engaging our students and ourselves”…

Film Production Education and COVID19 - A conversation between Freya Billington (University of Western England) & Neil Fox (Falmouth University)

Written by: Jacqueline Fleming & Theresa Quill

…"The reason why misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and other global events is so prevalent, is because we live in a visual world that lacks an emphasis on the importance of having a visual education and continually overstimulates our senses with both true and false information. While there have been institution and national level efforts to address this issue, the onslaught of continuous information concerning COVID-19 has complicated and progressed this concern.”

A video recording of teachers discussing how they have dealt with teaching during COVID-19

Written by: Professor Matthew Allen

…“Ultimately, what we can discern is that the Internet has changed the relationships which humans understand between space and time, place and rhythm. One’s sense of time and sense of space never exist without the other, but digital culture grew up as the way to experience them together differently. As that culture matured, extended, and mapped itself onto all life, rather than just the life spent ‘online’, so it was itself changed to accommodate the way space and time interrelate without computer mediation, creating hybrid formations of presence and absence within and outside of shared time and space.”

Written by: Niels Kerssens

"The question that is hardly, if at all, asked is: what does technology do to students and teachers? This issue is becoming increasingly urgent now that edtech —fueled by data, automated through algorithms, organised by interfaces, and driven by commercial business models— increasingly penetrates the core of the classroom, and the organization and direction of the learning process shifts from teachers to online environments.”