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2.2: Thinking Technology - Classroom Activity

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    315983

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    How To Use This Material [Instructor Note]

    • The following is a ‘gallery walk’ activity, where students—either individually, or as a group—walk around the room and interact with a host of interrelated quotes, all centered around critical thinking and technological change.
      • Gallery walks are a proven engagement tool, great at shaking up traditional group work activities as well as providing unique opportunities to kinesthetic learners in particular
      • Additionally, it’s a great way to have students interact with a diversity of content, as in the case in this lesson: the quotes range from ancient Greece to the modern day, with voices from fields such as pop culture, academia, law, and computing
    • To set up the activity, print the following slides full-page and disperse throughout the classroom (there are 22 quotes in total, still images presented below in historical order). There is a Google Slide version of this activity; a link to the Slides presentation can be found here, and at the bottom of this chapter section.
      • It also works as a whole-class activity, in which you use a projector to work through the material
    • This activity is meant to follow an engagement with Howard Rheingold’s ‘Technology 101’ article, but would certainly work as a stand-alone as well
    • You are welcome to make a copy of this material to edit and remix as you wish; please be sure to follow the CC license mandates when doing so
      • Additional credit goes to Dan Krutka and Jacob Pleasants of CivicsOfTechnology.org, from whom this activity is adapted

    Preamble
    Oftentimes, we take technology for granted, and see technological development as an innate good—a march towards becoming an ever-more equipped, able, and capable species. Today’s activity looks to disrupt, challenge, and investigate some of these knee-jerk assumptions, and help us develop a more critical lens when thinking through the many technological changes of our current moment.

    Welcome to the Gallery Walk

    • As you walk around the room, you’ll be confronted a variety of different perspectives, attitudes, and ways of thinking about technology, from a whole host of different voices throughout history; read through each quote a few times, and leave your reflections in the space provided
    • Here are some helpful questions to consider:
      • What is the speaker’s position on technology?
      • Do you agree or disagree with their assessment? Why or why not?
      • Has this quote held up over time, or does it seem outdated?
      • What is your reaction to the quote?
    • Write your thoughts, doodles, comments, questions, etc. in the space provided; try to leave a thought at each station
    • After the walk-through, we will reflect together as a class, thinking through our core questions for the day…
      • What kind of relationship do we want with technology?
      • How can critical thinking practices help us foster this relationship?

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    © J. F. Lindsay, CC BY-NC-SA

    This page titled 2.2: Thinking Technology - Classroom Activity is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by J. F. Lindsay.