Resources for Racial Equity in Educational Technology
Welcome participants!
Below are a few articles and resources referenced during the workshop. Feel free to share more resources in the comment section below. - Tara
5 Doubts about Data-Driven Schools (Anya Kamenetz via NPR).
Big Data in Education (Susan Fuhrman via Education Update Online).
Black Teens are Breaking the Internet and Seeing None of the Profits (Doreen St. Felix via The Fader).
Can Computer Programs Be Racist and Sexist? (Laura Sydell via NPR).
Children's Internet Protection Act (Federal Communications Commission).
Critical Questions for Big Data (danah boyd & Kate Crawford).
Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy (Chris Gilliard via Common Sense Education).
Facilitating Learning (Rhonda Robinson, Michael Molenda, & Landra Rezabek, 2008).
"I feel like a despised insect: Coming of age under surveillance in New York (Jeanne Theorharis via The Intercept_).
Internet Acceptable Use and Safety Policy (NYC DOE).
ISTE 2016: Technology Alone Cannot Create Social Equality (Meg Conlan via Ed Tech Magazine).
Poverty, Race, and America's Educational System: Part 1: School Discipline and Students of Color (Firesteel).
Race After the Internet (Lisa Nakamura & Peter Chow-White, Eds., 2012).
Racial Equity Resource Guide (W.K. Kellogg Foundation).
The Blockchain for Education: An Introduction (Audrey Watters).
The Ideology of Blockchain (for Education) (Audrey Watters).
Using Technology Wisely: The Keys to Success in Schools (Harold Wenglinsky, 2005).
Why Do Pokemon Avoid Black Neighborhoods? (Cory Doctorow via BoingBoing).
Glossary of Terms
Big data - cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon that rests on the interplay of maximizing computational power and algorithmic accuracy to gather, analyze, link, and compare large data sets; drawing on large data sets to identify patterns in order to make economic, social, technical, and legal claims; the widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previously impossible, with the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy (boyd & Crawford, 2012).
Blockchain - a distributed database that provide an unalterable, (semi-)public record of digital transactions. Each block aggregates a timestamped batch of transactions to be included in the ledger – or rather, in the blockchain. Each block is identified by a cryptographic signature. These blocks are all back-linked; that is, they refer to the signature of the previous block in the chain, and that chain can be traced all the way back to the very first block created. As such, the blockchain contains an un-editable record of all the transactions made (Watters, 2016).
Digital divide - refers to the gap in computer access between affluent and poor, or white and minority, students (Wenglinsky, 2005).
Digital redlining - A set of policies, investment decisions, and IT practices that actively create and maintain class boundaries through structures that discriminate against specific groups. Digital redlining is a verb, the 'doing' of difference, a 'doing' whose consequences reinforce existing class structures (Gilliard, 2016).
Educational technology - the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources (Robinson, Molenda, & Rezabek, 2008).
Racial equity - the condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. Racial equity is one part of racial justice, and included in the work to address root causes of inequities, not just their manifestations. This includes the elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them (W.K. Kellogg Foundation).