Connecting

• Main Authors: Thestrup, Klaus, Gislev, Tom, Elving, Pernille
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Greenland; Thomsen
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/connecting(0a301f68-b504-4988-952f-b011837d0e6a).html; https://conference.eadtu.eu/

We will present a framework for establishing distance education in different communities such as schools, makerspaces and kindergartens by combining social forms of learning (Dron & Anderson, 2014), cultures of creativity (Gauntlett & Thomsen 2013) and media ecologies seen as both environments and relations between media (Scolari, 2012). One study ASSIST developed tools to ensure appropriate vocational levels in classes where there was a lack of teachers educated in the specific subject. This project involved twelve Danish schools, with two partner schools in Kenya and Greenland. The focus was on the development of pedagogical methods and technical experimentation. Another study, The Global Makerspace between three schools in Denmark, Australia and Britain focussed on how children in makerspaces transformed images and objects through a common platform. The third project Digital World Citizens focussed on how 17 kindergartens in Denmark with 4-5 year old children exchanged ideas to use apps and combine analogue and digital spaces. In ASSIST the thesis was that a teacher who knew about either the subject, the pedagogy or the technology could support a teaching assistant through a digital mediated connection. It turned out that everybody involved, teachers, children and citizens, began to cooperate and adapt to the circumstances according to their actual knowledge and to develop new knowledge in collaboration. In The Global Makerspace it became obvious to transform, ask questions and give suggestions to others in an open pedagogy and not to try to solely copy each other´s media use and determine what others should do in a closed pedagogy. The Digital World Citizen pointed towards play, narratives and experiments as culturally based methods to communicate. Based on the above we will present a pedagogical model with a number of challenges and questions that suggests ways to establishing global communities including universities across time and space.