What if our digital technologies were protean?

“Proteus” (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
by skooksie

On Friday the 30th September 2016 I will present the paper – What if our digital technologies were protean? Implications for computational thinking, learning, and teaching – co-written by Elke Schneider and I at the ACCE’2016 conference.

Other resources include:

• A 1 question poll; and
  An attempt to explore whether people experience their organisational information systems as protean or not.If you haven’t already, do please take the time to complete the poll.
• Stories of digital modification.
  A copy of the Google doc we originally used to gather the data for the paper. This data was then analysed for themes.

Abstract

Not for the first time, the transformation of global society through digital technologies is driving an increased interest in the use of such technologies in both curriculum and pedagogy. Historically, the translation of such interest into widespread and effective change in learning experiences has been less than successful. This paper explores what might happen to the translation of this interest if the digital technologies within our educational institutions were protean. What if the digital technologies in schools were flexible and adaptable by and to specific learners, teachers, and learning experiences? To provide initial, possible answers to this question, the stories of digital technology modification by a teacher educator and a novice high school teacher are analysed. Analysis reveals that the modification of digital technologies in two very different contexts was driven by the desire to improve learning and/or teaching by: filling holes with the provided digital technologies; modelling to students effective practice with digital technologies; and, to better mirror real world digital technologies. A range of initial implications and questions for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers are drawn from these experiences. It is suggested that recognising and responding to the inherently protean nature of digital technologies may be a key enabler of attempts to harness and integrate digital technologies into both curriculum and pedagogy.