The 1st Annual Civics of Technology conference… was it a dream?
by Dan Krutka
In the opening session of the 1st annual Civics of Technology conference, Marie and I asked participants to “vision” the just futures they would bring about when their technology and education dreams come to fruition. This visioning activity was taught to me by my old department chair at Westmoore High School, Kim Pennington. She taught me to ask students (and I’ve been asking teacher candidates for the last decade), what does it look like when our dreams come true?
In The Global Citizen, Donella H. Meadows (1991) said:
“...Maybe it’s dumb to go around talking about a world without hunger. But I keep doing it. I think it’s essential. Behind every decision to fund a foreign aid bill or start a community garden, to give an aid organization or breed a high-yielding strain of wheat, to take a stand for justice or not to, there is some kind of vision. Visions alone don’t produce results, but we’ll never produce results without them. The absence of vision is one of the main reasons there is still hunger on this earth.” (p. 91)
The irony of this activity was that, in many ways, this conference was our dream coming true. When we launched the Civics of Technology website earlier this year (this year?!?), we wanted to form a scholarly and educational community that reimagined technology and (teacher) education. We led with a vision that “Technologies are not neutral and neither are the societies into which they are introduced. As technology continues encroaching in our lives, how can we advance technology education for just futures?” Our vision was inspired by critical and ecological scholars who challenged us to see human relationships with technology and each other differently. We have since published numerous curriculum resources, 28 blog posts (29 including this one), and several book reviews. We’ve hosted a livestream event and two book clubs with three more scheduled—including the first book club for Dr. Benjamin’s new book, Viral Justice (register on the Events page)! It all culminated with the conference on Thursday and Friday where we were honored, challenged, and rejuvenated by the discussions in each session.
You can find recordings of the conference sessions on the 2022 conference page. We ask that you view these sessions on that page and refrain from posting them elsewhere online without consent from the session leaders. We cannot thank the presenters enough for their incredible sessions. We also cannot say enough about how grateful we are to our two keynote speakers: Dr. Ruha Benjamin and Sepehr Vakil. Their talks invoked new dreams and directions we hope we can move toward. We also want to shout out the students of Dr. Benjamin’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab for their compelling presentations which reimagined immigration, education, health, and environmental justice in the Freedom School tradition. We not only had student presenters, but student attendees. When we think of where our dreams go next, we know that we cannot just put on an academic conference and host book clubs, we must see these visions with young people in and out of schools.
We want to take a moment to enjoy the conference as a dream coming true for us. We do so while recognizing the threats which systems of oppression pose to just futures coming to fruition in schools and society. The threats feel new, old, and very real. We aren’t naive to think a conference, curriculum, or book clubs will change things all of sudden. Yet, the wonderful thing about dreams is that you get new ones each night. We will need even bigger dreams as this next academic year begins for many of us. We hope all the presenters and participants will continue shaping the Civics of Technology project alongside us. What dreams will we see fulfilled next?