Scholarly Networks:
Friend or Foe or Risky Fray?
(Hint: ALL OF THE ABOVE)
Bonnie Stewart
University of Prince Edward Island, Canada
Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo
March 2016

…what now?

#DigPed =
refusing to act/teach/live as Dewey’s
“blind cogs & pinions”

#DigPed ≠ Tech
http://www.telecomtv.com/articles/tablets/retro-chic-apples-original-macintosh-reimagined-12100

#DigPed = (in part)
A Networked Approach

Where teaching & learning look like
THIS.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/122135325@N06/15117809516/in/dateposted/

#DigPed =
Education for Knowledge Abundance
http://www.flickr.com/photos/silatix/9886617776/sizes/c

"For the first time in human history, two related
propositions are true. One, it no longer
is possible to store within the human brain all of
the information that a human needs.
Second, it no longer is necessary to store within
the human brain all of the information that
humans need.
Education needs to be geared toward
the handling of data rather than the accumulation
of data.”
- Berlo, 1975

Structure of Abundance = Networks
https://plus.google.com/+DaveGray/posts/CQRVeKEsUvF?pid=5751686447270321954&oid=117373186752666867801

Price of Admission = Public Identity

Wait. WHOA. ???

Digital Public Scholarly
Networks:
! Friend?
! Foe?
! Risky Fray?

YES.

Networks as Friend

Can open new conversations
#ed1to1

Can extend conversations,
resource-sharing, & visibility of work
https://www.flickr.com/photos/legends2k/3473962847

@hypothes_is!

Networks can open up new
perspectives

Open new relationships

…And bring care.

Networks enable us to work
together across distance.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ooohoooh/1350774613/
Why?
Networks are not just for consuming,
but connecting.

Many-to-many communications
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/thumb/d/d8/Do_Not_Adjust_Your_Set.jpg/280px-Do_Not_Adjust_Your_Set.jpg

We become network nodes, forming
webs of visible (& invisible) connections

BUT.

Networks as Foe

“Deviant trajectories” – Costa (2014)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Love_your_country,_not_government.jpg

Networks make connectedness
+ scale visible…
They enact & replicate power relations.

Networked platforms reduce
identity to algorithms

Networks are becoming
institutionalized

Networked identities = new forms of
vulnerability
commodification + institutional indictments of deviance +
re-inscription of societal biases

So. Networks as Risky Fray?

KINDA.

Callout Culture is not one
single phenomenon
https://www.flickr.com/photos/seandavis/16528463225/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/
conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/

“The network message from one person
to another / others is very rapid and
can in effect be in the present…
textualized verbal exchange registers
psychologically as having the temporal
immediacy of oral exchange.”
Ong, 1996

Speech-based
expectations
Call Out Culture = Collapsed Publics
Print-based
interpretations

So. Stay off the internet, & live happily
ever after? J

Callout culture & networked culture ARE
part of the “apparatus” of our times.
We cannot develop
students’ capacity to live in knowledge
abundance without developing
our own.

Networked practices = scholarship
! Scholarship of discovery
! Scholarship of integration
! Scholarship of application
! Scholarship of teaching
!
(Boyer, 1990)

Networks allow participation
outside academic hierarchy
Sometimes…I’ll choose
someone with twenty
followers, because I
come across something
they’ve managed to say
in 140 characters, and I
think “oh, look at you,
crafting on a
grain of rice.”
- @KateMfD
h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/visualpanic/843670538

Going forward in networks =

Build on what’s been started here

Be your (many) selves

#DigPed = a scholarship of abundance
https://www.flickr.com/photos/92998734@N03/8466586880/

#DigPed = a story of connection

#DigPed = a scholarship of connection.
Of dance.
Ring the bells that still can ring!
Forget your perfect offering!
There is a crack,!
A crack, in everything!
That’s how the light gets in.!
!
- Leonard Cohen

THANKYOU.
@bonstewart
bstewart@upei.ca