Assignment #6 - Digital Citizenship

Directions:

This assignment asks students to envision how educational technology can support the development of a better community, whether that community is defined as Ames, Iowa State University, central Iowa, or a range of others. You will identify an issue that is important to *a community* and, using existing or imagined educational technology, will create an intervention/experiment/innovation/solution that addresses this problem.

For this assignment, there are 2 steps-- first, a description of the community issue at hand, and second, a solution/recommendation to "solve" or at least address this problem. Remember back to our last class, when we described the notion of "deep canvassing," which is an approach to nonviolent communicative practices that work to create justice-oriented communities. How can we use technology as a tool of healing, justice, and innovation rather than as a tool to demean, attack, and do harm? 

Step 1:

Identify the challenge in the community (i.e., whether this is Ames, Iowa State University, the state of Iowa, or some other defined place). The challenge can be affecting you personally, a cause you identify with, or just something you feel is important. The key here is to identify and recognize that some community is being harmed, hurt, or affected negatively. At Iowa State, over the past 5 years, there has been a rash of anti-Semitic "chalkings" around campus-- not only is this inherently harmful to Jewish people, their allies, and the Iowa State community at large, but it also seems aligned with broader political associations of Nazism/fascism, which have no place in society at large. 

Step 2:

Try to create a solution that works toward healing this injustice or wrong, through the use of technology. For example, one idea I had was to create an Augmented Reality App to "lay" information on top of the physical world. So, for example, if you were walking in front of Park Library and saw this anti-Semitic hate speech (not included here for obvious reasons), the app would pull anti-racist information and literature from various sources and "layer" it over top. Based on theories of action around how best to respond to hate speech, this app would provide useful information for people who may not yet be aware of the damaging consequences of hate speech and the violence it condones. 

Requirements: 

Please write at least one paragraph (250 words or so) for each step. For step 1, identify the issue, and explain the harm that it does. For step 2, you will create an intervention (using technology) that works to reduce harm through education, intervention, or mitigation (reduction) of the harm. You can describe your goals in step 2, and how technology can create new possibilities. 

Please choose issues that matter to you and your community-- you can be as creative, imaginative, innovative as you like (provided that the ideas are based on educational technology theory).