Singular XQ Ep 13: Jeanmarie Higgins and the Intimacy of Technology in the Classroom
The word “interesting” comes up a lot in this transcript. I think that word pops up when two curious people end up in a conversation. There…
The word “interesting” comes up a lot in this transcript. I think that word pops up when two curious people end up in a conversation. There is very little I am not interested in. (I confess, this is sometimes a problem for me.)
Intimacy is not a word that often comes up when discussing technology in the classroom. For many, technology has a distancing effect, but not Jeanmarie and her colleagues, who wrote a book about using technology to teach during the pandemic.
Jeanmarie is a technological pragmatist — she is not a technophile seeking to use every gadget; she does what works and what allows her to “magnify her presence” with her students. In other words, she uses technology to center the student and doesn’t use the student as an excuse to center the technology.
One of the more fascinating concepts is how the pandemic forced a reflection on synchronous and asynchronous action — what activities are best done live, what activities are best done alone, and what activities are best done together asynchronously? The cadences of synchrony and asynchrony fascinate many of us as we step out into the future of work and the future of the classroom.
We had a conversation that could have extended into hours and did after the show concluded— tune in and listen to the half-hour we captured.
