Previewing the 1st Annual (and free) Civics of Technology Conference
When we started the Civics of Technology project earlier this year, our hope was to bring together educators interested in interrogating technology. There seemed to be little emphasis in schools, teacher education, or the educational technology field in helping students (and educators) grapple with the unprecedented pace of technological change occurring in and out of schools. We started by posting blogs, sharing curriculum, and creating events, but we knew we always wanted to bring people together in a common space to learn alongside each other. We are therefore excited to preview the 1st annual Civics of Technology conference to be held virtually on August 4th and 5th, 2022!
As we’ve created this conference, we’ve tried to reimagine what we want a conference to be. First, we’ve made the conference free and open to anyone who registers and verifies their identity. Conferences don’t always need to be $500 and sponsored by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. All our sessions will be synchronous on Zoom and many videos will be posted on the conference page afterward. Second, we’ve told our presenters to be creative in their sessions. Some sessions will be informational and others may ask you to participate in a lesson or activity. For example, we will open our conference with a participatory visioning session to identify the just futures we want to bring to fruition. We cannot review all the amazing sessions in the conference so please go to the 2022 conference page to start planning your schedule for the conference!
We do want to share more about our two incredible keynotes. On Thursday, Dr. Ruha Benjamin will keynote from 3-3:50pm EST. Dr. Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab and author of three books, Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019). Dr. Benjamin writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice. You can find more about her and her work at https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/. Dr. Benjamin’s Race After Technology book has been foundational to how we view technology at the Civics of Technology conference. And, yes, a book club is coming this fall (details forthcoming) for her new book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. We are also excited to announce that Dr. Benjamin is not coming alone. In four different sessions, her undergraduate students from the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton University will share how they engaged in the tradition of 1960s Freedom Schools developed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to liberate people from oppression using the tools of popular education. The data justice session topics will address issues such as healthcare, education, immigration, policing, work, etc.
On Friday, Dr. Sepehr Vakil will keynote from 3-3:50pm EST. Dr. Vakil is an assistant professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Dr. Vakil’s program of research spans three broad thematic areas: (a) ethics, learning, and technology, (b) participatory design and community-engaged research methodologies, and (c) historical and sociopolitical analyses of science and technology education across global contexts. He oversees the Young People’s Race Power and Technology project (YPRPT), which is an out of school learning initiative designed specifically for middle school and high school students in the Chicago-area. The conference will also host a session that features youth-produced documentaries about technology.
We will add more details on both Dr. Benjamin and Dr. Vakil’s keynote and the student sessions on the 2022 conference page soon! We cannot wait to learn alongside you all as we explore the conference theme: Visioning Just Futures! We hope this conference will serve as a catalyst to enact change in the upcoming school year! See you on August 4th and 5th!