Minutes from February meeting

Notes from the meetup:
An overview of the previous year in the reading group was discussed (a similar one can be found here):

It was felt that one of the primary outcomes of the past year was a move away from the ‘pedagogy’ aspect of the group, and a predominant focus on the ‘platform’ aspect. We will therefore attempt to account for this in the coming year.
One result of this was a greater focus on our understandings of data and how different people experience data differently. This was seen as stemming from the Zerilli reading around Hannah Arendt and political imaginaries. The result of this was a highlighting of groups who have been and are still left out of how data happens. Essentially, we tried to focus on groups who were not ‘pale, male, and stale’. There is a deontological good in this (of listening to groups who are otherwise silenced) and a consequentialist good of offering news ways we can understand what data should (and should not) be. This focus is slated to remain for the coming year due to these positives.

We then discussed planned changes for the readings in the coming year. Three key alterations were identified, listed below:

• Ensure the reading is anchored in the concept of ‘platform pedagogies’ by having short justifications for the readings, which would act as an introduction to the meetings. This would be paired with having tags for the readings so that we can more easily connect readings through themes. I would update these tags on the website but suggestions for tags would be more than welcome.
• For the readings themselves, we thought that it would be good to start the year off by discussing the pandemic (and its impact on education) within a historical context. This would mean discussing other important events in history (recent-ish, post-war events but also further back into the history of education). The idea here was to examine times of historical rupture and reformation, viewing them in the context of education and platforms. What events these are remains open to suggestion.
• Lastly, there was an emphasis on ensuring that the topics we covered could be (at times, at least) connected to real-world activities or media. This would act as a coda to the readings, as an example of what was discussed in them.

There were also administrative changes suggested within the meeting:

• Once again, tags on the website’s reading list.
• A ‘compass’ diagram to show how the readings connect to one another, and the directions we are moving in across time/meetings.
• Possibly organising meetings and sharing resources on groups.io (yet to be decided upon).
• I have also created a shared Doc in which everyone can drop reading suggestions. The intention is to have a repository of readings built up over time, in the event that people do not have on-the-spot suggestions at the end of meetings. These can simply be titles/authors/links.