Neag School of Education

Born on the Water, Raised on the Word

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Born on the Water, Raised on the Word: Invoking, Learning, and Remembering Silenced Histories Through Literature, with Grace Player, Sian Charles-Harris, and Dominique Battle-Lawson. March 23, 2022, 4:30pm, Austin Building Room 217

The Humanities Institute and the Neag School of Education present

Born on the Water, Raised on the Word

Invoking, Learning, and Remembering Silenced Histories Through Literature

A panel presentation with
Grace Player, Sian Charles-Harris, and Dominique Battle-Lawson

and responses by
Julianna Iacovelli, Aarushi Nohria, Erica Popoca, and Samantha vanValkenburg

March 23, 2022, 4:30–6:00, Stern Lounge (Austin Building, Room 217)

Registration required.

The first forty students to register will receive a free copy of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, with illustrations by Nikkolas Smith. All registrants are invited to attend Nikole Hannah-Jones in conversation with Manisha Sinha, March 30, 2022 at 2:00pm in the Student Union Theater.

DHMS: Teaching Machines

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Poster with headshot of Audrey Watters and text that reads: Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, by Audrey Watters. Live. Online. Registration required. February 17, 2022, 4:00pm. Co sponsored by the center for excellence in teaching and learning and the Neag School of Education.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. The event will be presented with automated transcription.

The Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative presents:

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning

with Audrey Watters

February 17, 2022, 4:00–5:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Join us to hear Audrey Watters speak about her latest book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press), which tells the pre-digital history of “personalized learning.” Watters demonstrates that the history of ed tech does not begin with videos on the internet, or even with the personal computer. Her book instead focuses on early twentieth-century teaching machines, the psychological theories that underpinned them, how they were reported on in the media, and how they shaped and were shaped by the cultures in which they were produced.

Audrey Watters is a writer and independent scholar who focuses on education technology—its politics and its pedagogical implications. Although she was two chapters into her Comparative Literature dissertation, she decided to abandon academia, and she now happily fulfills the one job recommended to her by a junior high aptitude test: freelance writer. She has written for The Baffler, The Atlantic, Vice, Hybrid Pedagogy, Inside Higher Ed, The School Library Journal, and elsewhere across the Web, but she is best known for the work on her own website Hack Education. Audrey has given keynotes and presentations on education technology around the world and is the author of several books, including The Monsters of Education Technology, The Revenge of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Curse of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Monsters of Education Technology 4, and Claim Your Domain. Her latest book, Teaching Machines (MIT Press), examines the pre-history of “personalized learning.” Audrey was a recipient of the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship at Columbia University for the 2017–2018 academic year.

Cosponsored by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the Neag School of Education.

In advance of her talk we will be hosting a book discussion on Teaching Machines February 10 at 3:00pm.

UCHI Co-Sponsors Annette Vee Lecture on Algorithmic Writers

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Annette Vee headshotThe Digital Humanities & Media Studies initiative of the The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) will co-sponsor a lecture by Annette Vee, associate professor of English at University of Pittsburg, entitled “Algorithmic Writers and Implications for Literacy.” Her talk will take place on Wednesday, October 2 at 2 PM in the UCHI Conference Room (Babbidge Library, 4th Floor). Annette Vee is also the director of the Composition Program at Pitt, and is involved in various initiatives that connect the humanities, digital media, and computation. She is also the author of Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing (MIT Press, 2017). Other co-sponsors of this event are the Aetna Chair of Writing and the Neag School of Eductation’s Reading and Language Arts Center. Below you will find the abstract for Vee’s talk.

 

“Algorithmic Writers and Implications for Literacy”

Writing today is inextricable from computation: we write on and for computers. But computers are no longer just word processors or distributors of our writing. Algorithms, which enter our lives through computers and crowd our writing spaces, affect what we write, who reads it, and how. Algorithms read our emails in order to write our emails. They correct our grammar, they can summarize and simplify texts, and they choose what we read online. If you write on or with computers (and you do), your algorithmic coauthors influence what you write and how you write it. Algorithms are more active agents than pencils or coffeeshops—other materialities that affect our writing processes—and they have complex relationships to the humans who produce and use them. What is literacy when it’s learned, performed, and subjected to algorithmic writers? And how should literacy be taught in the context of ubiquitous algorithmic writing? In this talk, Annette Vee will describe contemporary scenes of algorithmic writing, place them in the history of literacy and computation, and present some implications and applications for literacy learning now.