{"id":321,"date":"2021-10-19T19:40:21","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T02:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0204\/?p=321"},"modified":"2021-10-19T20:00:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T03:00:44","slug":"exploring-possible-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0204\/exploring-possible-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"What If? Exploring Possible Futures"},"content":{"rendered":"

By 2030, the equity policies of the early 2020s became entrenched in educational policy. COVID was the catalyst that proved change was possible and it positioned technology as the tool to make this change happen. COVID allowed for educational think tanks, academics, and stakeholders to dream of a better, more inclusive future, propelled by the Black Lives Matter and Idle No More movements. The next triggering event, or crisis, would be much easier to manage because systems of education would have learned from the past. In this future, learning would be boundaryless because it crossed geopolitical borders as satellites gave school systems unfettered access to the internet for any place any time learning, while policy regulated dangers such as data-driven learning analytics that infringed on human rights and student-well being. Education would become a cyclical process of give-and-take, a balancing of student-centred customizable learning filtered through international standards of holistic equity policy governed by non-partisan councils. Learning would benefit the student, no matter their socioeconomic background or geographical location. Land-based learning in one remote blended learning environment was live-streamed to a densely populated smart school in a country on the other side of the planet to bring students closer together, toward empathy, one of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EQUITY?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Bozkurt (2020), through a systematic review of educational technology research patterns, notes that every innovation triggers socio-economic change (Bozkurt, 2020). These findings reveal critical research of concerns such as: datafication, justice and equality (<\/span>Macgilchrist, 2019<\/span>), ethics and privacy (<\/span>Ifenthaler & Tracey, 2016<\/span><\/a>; <\/span>Regan, & Jesse, 2018<\/span><\/a>) ongoing optimistic predictions and hypes (<\/span>Cuban, & Jandri\u0107, 2015<\/span><\/a>). Bozkurt contends a shift is taking place from technological determinism to centre issues of ethics and equity (Bozkurt, 2020).<\/span><\/p>\n

SO WHAT?
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\n<\/span>Davidson (2021) relies on W.E.B. Du Bois\u2019s <\/span>ugly progress<\/span><\/i> to highlight the twisted journey that discourses travel throughout history, or \u201ca looping conception of time that involves shuffling between the disappointments of the past and utopian hopes for the future\u201d (Davidson, 2021). We can examine our recent history and reactionary policy as examples of the narrative failing the discourse of equity. It\u2019s time to envision a predictive education system rather than a reactionary one.<\/span><\/p>\n

HOW? (a few ideas)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n