Technology for Continuing the Dialogue

• "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other .“  (Freire, 1970, p.72)
  

• “The Freirean dream can become a reality: the rapid penetration of new technologies in learning environments is an unprecedented opportunity for the dissemination of "Freirean aesthetics" ...creating an environment in which students, in their own voice, can concretize their ideas and projects with motivation and commitment... to teach one another.”  (Blikstein, 2008)
•  “Conditions for democratic talk must be established in the classroom...they must set a context in which peers are seen as valuable sources of ideas and solutions rather than competitors”.  (Johntson, 1995)

The peer modelling videos are one way for artists to share their 'hopeful inquiry...with each other', and are certainly a powerful way of harnessing technology to help the student 'concretize their ideas...and commitment' and 'teach one another'.  However, I think we can go even further, as the technology advances, to create even more conditions for 'democratic talk' - to open up the dialogue between peers, to create a situation where peers are 'valuable sources of ideas and solutions rather than competitors'.  

We have experimented with these ideas, to some extent, in a series of videos and question and answer exchanges between students.  Students were asked to watch Jackie's initial video, in which she outlined some of her ideas around the making of a comic book:

Students were then given the assignment of asking Jackie questions about the work - questions that would help them in their own practice.  To create a greater sense of dialogue, students asked their questions orally, recording these with their phones, and sending the questions via email to the student.  Then, Jackie continued the dialogue with a response video, where she answered the questions:

These questions and answers could have been given by text alone; however, we felt the dialogue was so much more personal and therefore engaging and motivating with voice.    The images added to the interest, and illustrated many of the points, thereby engaging the whole brain.  

Given the right conditions, it is also possible that a similar dialogue could have been created synchronously; a technology should have Google Meet could have been used to connect the peer-artist with a cohort of students.  One of the advantages of the asynchronous method used in this experiment  was the time it allowed for the peer-artist to really reflect on their work, and provide the most meaningful answers.  

Opportunities for using technology to create dialogues like this are also ways of locating the learning of a research based art practice within  the UDL framework, 'providing multiple means of engagement', 'multiple means of expression', and 'multiple means of representation'.

Given enough schools involved in the art practice archive project, we can imagine a situation where so many questions would be asked that a very rich database of audio Q&A would be available for future cohorts.  

REFERENCES

Berk, Ronald A. (2009). “Multimedia Teaching with Video Clips: TV, Movies, YouTube, and mtvU in the College Classroom.” International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning 5 (1): 1–21.   ​

Blikstein, P. (2008). Travels in Troy with Freire: Technology as an agent of emancipation. In Social Justice Education for Teachers (pp. 205-235). Brill Sense.   

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (MB Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum, 2007.   

Johnston, P. H., & Nicholls, J. G. (1995). Voices we want to hear and voices we don't. Theory into practice, 34(2), 94-100.   ​