ETEC 521
Indigeneity, Technology, and Education
Description
This course explores central concerns of globalization and Indigenous people related to educational policy and practice. As colonialism has expanded, it has taken new technological forms; Native people have been uniquely positioned to both challenge technology and to utilize it for their own purposes of identity expression and political mobilization. This course raises questions about the dilemmas of cultural expression in a postmodern internet age while surveying the sites where Indigenous people have employed computer and distance learning technologies to reinvigorate languages, oral traditions, and art forms that were in decline previously.
Both theoretical and practical issues will be discussed related to the protection of cultural property, Indigenous epistemology, the dilemmas of "place based" education, and the Native resistance to corporate hegemony. Students will develop a critical vocabulary on cultural responsiveness related to Indigenous cosmology and ways of knowing.
OBJECTIVES
- Students will demonstrate the ability to include relevant literature on Indigenous knowledge and values in graduate level writing assignments related to technology and media.
- Students will advance their ability to participate in discussions related to the development of technology based learning that incorporates appropriate Indigenous values and goals.
- Students will develop an understanding of the ways that oral tradition and Indigenous knowledge are interconnected while critically evaluating the nature of internet technology as a contemporary expression of visual literacy and orality. Students will assess the prospects of technological transmission of Indigenous mythic sensibilities through the internet.
- Students will learn to recognize stereotypes of Indigenous people and advance a critical understanding of how decolonization is being enacted by self-determining Indigenous communities. Students will gain insights into the history of the ways Indigenous people and communities have been both defined by colonialism and the ways that technology has been utilized to reclaim cultural space and create forms for communicating identity and history both within and without the Indigenous community.
- Students will utilize the principles of cultural responsiveness as described by the Alaska Native Knowledge Network and apply them for evaluating the introduction of new technologies in classrooms for Indigenous students.
- Students will demonstrate knowledge of the literature on technology, culture, and intellectual property rights by incorporating their own research questions into a broader exploratory paper.