Thomas Hillman

Learning, knowing and opportunities for participation: technologies and communicative practices

ABSTRACT In recent decades, digitization, digital technology and the expansion of the Internet have resulted in significant changes in media ecology. Important consequences of these developments concern the socialization of new generations, where the values, skills and identities of young people are shaped through their participation in a range of online activities. One important consequence of the use of Internet and digital resources is that academic learning no longer is restricted to the school. Neither does it mainly imply being able to reproduce what is already known. The focus of this special issue section is on research on alternative settings for learning where digital technology plays a significant role and where it co-constitutes the activities of learners in significant manners.

Situated Social Media Use: A Methodological Approach to Locating Social Media Practices and Trajectories

In this paper we draw upon a number of explorations of social media activities, trying to capture and understand them as located, situated practices. This methodological endeavor spans over analyzing patterns in big data feeds (here Instagram) as well as small-scale video-based ethnographic studies of user activities. A situated social media perspective involves examining how social media production and consumption are intertwined. Drawing upon our studies of social media use in cultural institutions we show how visitors orient to their social media presence while attending to physical space during a visit, and how editing and sharing processes are formed by the trajectory through a space. We discuss the application and relevance of this approach for understanding social media and social photography in situ.

Mobile Wellbeing

While mobile phones can be empowering, constant access to a world of people and information can also bring distraction from the present moment and from the people and things that are physically present in ways that are sometimes unwanted. Excessive use of mobile phones can also have negative consequences on our sleep and concentration. In many respects mobile phones are challenging for our general mental wellbeing. Many designers are now looking into ways to better support mental wellbeing, be it through apps for mindfulness and meditation, or the better design of notifications and sleep modes. People are also developing strategies and ways of coping with the negative aspects of mobile technology, from self-control based approaches such as uninstalling social media apps or not keeping phones by the bedside, to more practice-based approaches such as meditation. This workshop aims to bring researchers and practitioners together to discuss mobile technology, human practice and mental wellbeing.

Traces of engagement: narrative-making practices with smartphones on a museum field trip

In this paper, we explore museum visitor learning through the examination of the engagement in narrative-making practices of school children while visiting a natural history museum. Two groups of children are given worksheets and encouraged to use their own mobile technologies to document their visits in relation to the subject of evolutionary mechanisms. Their engagement is occasioned through this worksheet and we show how they negotiate the interpretation of the task and then go on to complete it in quite different ways. We examine, in turn, how the students structure their visits with walking paths through the museum exhibitions, and how they structure the narratives they produce to complete the tasks by using the tools at hand and incorporating different parts of the exhibits.

The Inscription, Translation and Re-Inscription of Technology for Mathematical Learning

Seeking to contribute to our understanding of the role of educational technology in mathematical learning, this paper takes a socio-genetic approach to tracing the ways technology becomes part of classroom mathematical activity. It illuminates the reflexive processes of inscription, translation and re-inscription as technologies evolve by examining the development and classroom use of Texas Instruments’TI-Nspire™. To investigate the development and use of TI-Nspire, research from the field of Science and Technology Studies is drawn on that provides insights into the relationship between development, technology, and users while avoiding essentialist positions that obscure either technological or human aspects of the relationship. The findings show that rather than being a linear process where the technology is passed from developer to teacher to student, the development and use of TI-Nspire involves multiple feedback loops with constant reconfiguration. These loops occur at several levels as teachers and students integrate the technology into their mathematical activity and these reconfigurations feed into new versions of the technology.

The epistemic culture in an online citizen science project: Programs, antiprograms and epistemic subjects:

In the past decade, some areas of science have begun turning to masses of online volunteers through open calls for generating and classifying very large sets of data. The purpose of this study is to investigate the epistemic culture of a large-scale online citizen science project, the Galaxy Zoo, that turns to volunteers for the classification of images of galaxies. For this task, we chose to apply the concepts of programs and antiprograms to examine the ‘essential tensions’ that arise in relation to the mobilizing values of a citizen science project and the epistemic subjects and cultures that are enacted by its volunteers. Our premise is that these tensions reveal central features of the epistemic subjects and distributed cognition of epistemic cultures in these large-scale citizen science projects.

Higher education dominance and siloed knowledge: a systematic review of flipped classroom research

This structured review examined (academic) publications on flipped or inverted classrooms based on all Scopus database (n = 530) references available until mid-June 2016. The flipped or inverted classroom approach has gained widespread attention during the latest decade and is based on the idea of improving student learning by prepared self-studies via technology-based resources (‘flips’) followed by high-quality, in-class teaching and learning activities. However, only a few attempts have been made to review the knowledge of the field of interest more systematically. This article seeks to address this problem and investigates what constitutes the research on flipped classrooms and, in particular, to examine the knowledge contributions with the field so far in relation to the wider research topic of educational technology. This review found that the current state of flipped classrooms as a field of interest is growing fast, with a slight conference preference and a focus on higher education and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) area contributions, with the US as the predominant geographical context. It is concluded that studies on flipped classrooms are dominated by studies in higher education sector and are relatively local in character. The research tends not to interact beyond the two clusters of general education/educational technology and subject-specific areas. This implies that knowledge contributions related to the flipped classroom approach are relatively siloed and fragmented and have yet to stabilise. Academically and socially, the research is quite scattered, and only local evidence and experiences are available. The knowledge contributions within this field of interest seem to be anecdotal rather than systematically researched. To a large extent, the research lacks anchoring in, for example, learning theory or instructional design known from educational technology traditions and which would have helped much of the flipped classroom research to examine aspects of the flipped classroom approach more fully.

Self-presentation in digital media among adolescent patients with obesity: Striving for integrity, risk-reduction, and social recognition

Background Emerging research suggests that social media has the potential in clinical settings to enhance interaction with and between pediatric patients with various conditions. However, appearance norms and weight stigmatization can make adolescents with obesity uncomfortable about using these visual-based media. It is therefore important to explore these adolescents’ perspectives to identify the implications and concerns regarding the use of social media in clinical settings. Objective To explore the experiences of adolescents in treatment for obesity in terms of how they present themselves on social media, their rationale behind their presentations, and their feelings related to self-presentation. Methods Interviews were conducted with 20 adolescents enrolled in a pediatric outpatient obesity clinic, then transcribed and categorized using qualitative content analysis and Goffman’s dramaturgical model. Participants used a screen-recorded laptop to demonstrate their online self-presentation practices. Findings: Adolescent girls and boys undergoing treatment for obesity used visual-based social media, but girls in particular experienced weight stigma online and undertook self-presentation strategies to conceal weight-related content such as avoiding showing close-up photos of their bodies and not posting images of unhealthy “fattening” foods. Participants perceived the potential use of social media in clinical settings as being too risky and private. Conclusions Given the complexity of general visual-based social media use by adolescents, and not wanting their patient status to be visible to peers, healthcare should primarily focus on working with more restricted instant messaging when engaging with adolescents with obesity.