Remote Lab Activities in a Digital Age: Insights into Current Practices and Future Potentials

<p>This essay explores the way that digital media helps us think differently about how we practice history. Digital media can raise two issues about how our current practices can offer new ways to explore the current state of historiography. First, the more one is immersed in digital tools, they make us question first principles, the various practices and assumptions of modern history itself. Second, it offers ways of communicating the past that do not hide the process of “doing” history. In this article I will draw on my project, 1884 Japan, to raise questions about data or the fact. By using recorded happenings, I plan to explore the distancing of fact from the context in which it was embedded. Recorded happenings exist prior to the filtering of importance. It enables us to first recover the heterogeneity of pasts and recover the stories and experiences of a variety of people who have usually been written out of Japanese history. Second, by presenting this material I will suggest a layered, multitemporal history that combines the narrative of national becoming with the experiences of others.</p><p> </p>

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Rethinking and reinventing learning, education and collaboration in the digital age—from creating technologies to transforming cultures

International Journal of Information and Learning Technology ◽

10.1108/ijilt-04-2020-0051 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 37 (5) ◽

pp. 241-252 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Gerhard Fischer ◽

Johan Lundin ◽

J. Ola Lindberg

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Lifelong Learning ◽

New Technologies ◽

Digital Technologies ◽

Digital Age ◽

Content Type ◽

Trade Offs ◽

School Learning ◽

Learning Focused ◽

Current Practices

PurposeThe digitalization of society results in challenges and opportunities for learning and education. This paper describes exemplary transformations from current to future practices. It illustrates multi-dimensional aspects of learning which complement and transcend current frameworks of learning focused on schools. While digital technologies are necessary for these transformations, they are not sufficient. The paper briefly illustrates the applicability of the conceptual framework to the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that design opportunities and design trade-offs in relation to digital technologies and learning should be explored by envisioning the cultural transformation that are desirable for making learning a part of life.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on the work conducted at the symposium “Rethinking and Reinventing Learning, Education, and Collaboration in the Digital Age—From Creating Technologies to Transforming Cultures” that took place in Engeltofta outside of Gävle, Sweden in September 2019. The symposium invited scholars in collaborative analysis of design opportunities and design trade-offs in relation to digital technologies and learning and explored design strategies for systematically and proactively increasing digital technology's contributions to learning and collaborating. The paper first provides a condensed introduction of a conceptual framework summarizing current practices, their problems and promising alternatives. Multi-dimensional aspects of learning and lifelong learning will be briefly described as promising future alternatives to school learning. Examples of transformative practices are supporting the major argument of the paper that creating new technologies is an important prerequisite to address the fundamental challenge of transforming cultures. The unanticipated but fundamental event of the occurrence of COVID-19 will be briefly described to provide further evidence for the need and the applicability of our conceptual framework for rethinking and reinventing learning, education and collaboration in the digital age.FindingsThe paper provides a condensed introduction of a conceptual framework summarizing current practices, their problems and promising alternatives. The framework includes multi-dimensional aspects of learning and lifelong learning as a promising future alternative to a focus on school learning.Originality/valueThis paper describes exemplary transformations from current to future practices. It illustrates multi-dimensional aspects of learning which complement and transcend current frameworks of learning focused on schools.

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Identity, Technology and their Confluence: Governmentality in the Digital Age

Law, Technology and Humans ◽

10.5204/lthj.v2i2.1437 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 81-96

Author(s):

Chris Dent

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Digital Age ◽

First Century ◽

Fake News ◽

Digital World ◽

The Law ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Legal Subjects ◽

Libel Law ◽

Current Practices

The digital age has posed significant challenges for the governance of society. These challenges stem, in part, from the fact that many of the practices of governance arose in the pre-digital world. Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’ is a framework that can take account of the different sets of practices of governance. Comparing current practices with those highlighted by Miller and Rose’s ‘three families’ of governmentality suggests that twenty-first century governance operates as a new, fourth family. This research demonstrates this through an examination of aspects of the law—such as welfare and libel law—that have changed since the nineteenth century, with those changes mapping to the different families. In other words, the manner in which we, as legal subjects, have been constituted has changed, and will continue to change. As such, while specific practices such as fake news are seen to be problematic now, any reactions to them are historically contingent—and so the practices may not be seen to be an issue in a couple of decades time.

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