Supporting Critical Civic Learning with Interactive Technology

Abstract

Many educators desire to see technology as a panacea for inequity in education. In this chapter, I argue that technology can, for now, best serve civic research by providing new lines of communication and capture moments of democratic teaching and learning in action. Through the Brooklyn Public Scholars project, I sought to undertake a six-semester curriculum design process with students to focus on three generative themes in the humanities: difference, democratic thinking, and community. These efforts to bring a humanities perspective to democratic decision-making encouraged me to expand my civic education aspirations to explicitly include my own research into the course curriculum. However, Hurricane Sandy brought to the fore levels of resistance to using digital technology as well as opportunities to make technology adaptable to student needs. Because some students exhibited disruptive and self-defeating behaviors in our online learning environments a creative use of technology supplemented the work we were doing in the college to solve modern challenges in and out of the classroom. This chapter explores how technology integration in meaningful civic education is a must, not an add-on, and argues that we have to provide learners with the digital tools necessary to collaborate globally on pressing modern challenges requiring innovative solutions.