Previewing the 3rd Annual (and free) Civics of Technology Conference
Announcements
Monthly Tech Talk on Tuesday, 07/9/24: Join our monthly tech talks to discuss current events, articles, books, podcast, or whatever we choose related to technology and education. There is no agenda or schedule. To avoid July 4th holiday conflicts, our next Tech Talk will be on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 at 8-9pm EST/7-8pm CST/6-7pm MST/5-6pm PST. Learn more on our Events page and register to participate.
3rd Annual Conference: Our third annual Civics of Technology conference will be held online on August 1st, from 11-4 pm EST and on August 2nd, 2024 from 11-3pm! Our featured keynotes will be Dr. Tiera Tanksley and Mr. Brian Merchant. You can register and learn more on our 2024 conference page.
September Book Club: For our next book club we will read Ashley Shew’s 2023 book, Against Technoableism Rethinking Who Needs Improvement. We will meet at 8pm EDT on Thursday, September 12th, 2024. You can register on our events page.
By Marie K. Heath
Two and half years ago we started the Civics of Technology with the hope of bringing together educators interested in interrogating technology. Over this time we’ve posted weekly blogs, shared curriculum, met for book discussions and monthly tech talks, and hosted our first and second annual Civics of Technology conferences. Bringing people together in a common space to learn alongside each other and build community is central to the work of our project, which is why we are so excited to preview our third annual Civics of Technology conference to be held virtually on August 1st and 2nd, 2024!
The third annual conference theme is Tech Imaginaries. Our themes the last two years have been Visioning Just Futures (Year 1) and Liberatory Tech Actions (Year 2), and this year we'd like to turn toward surfacing, confronting, and playing with how imagination works to create tech futures. This theme builds on our project motto, “Technologies are not neutral and neither are the societies into which they are introduced.”
Similar to our prior years’ conferences, 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. (Here we need to give an appreciative shout out to Marie’s school, Loyola University of Maryland’s Center for Equity, Justice, and Leadership in Education who has agreed to sponsor our keynote speakers this year.) 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. We are of course VERY excited by our keynotes Tiera Tanksley and Brian Merchant.
You can see the preliminary schedule on our 2024 conference page. In the following days we’ll be adding descriptions and a few other items, but I’d just like to take a moment to tease a few of the following session titles, which frankly, sound amazing.
Superheros and Villians of Learning Design: A Disasterclass
Smart Campus Imaginaries and Surveillance
Writing (Auto)Correctly: Thinking Technoskeptically about AI-Powered Writing Tools
Resisting as Part of our Tech Imaginaries
AI is Anti-Black. What can Educators do about this?
We will be password protecting the conference site on July 31st. In order to access the conference you’ll need to register so that you can join on August 1st and 2nd!