“I am not a maker. In a framing and value system is about creating artifacts, specifically ones you can sell, I am a less valuable human. As an educator, the work I do is superficially the same, year on year. That’s because all of the actual change, the actual effects, are at the interface between me as an educator, my students, and the learning experiences I design for them. People have happily informed me that I am a maker because I use phrases like “design learning experiences,” which is mistaking what I do (teaching) for what I’m actually trying to help elicit (learning). To characterize what I do as “making” is to mistake the methods—courses, workshops, editorials—for the effects. Or, worse, if you say that I “make” other people, you are diminishing their agency and role in sense-making, as if their learning is something I do to them.”
Debbie Chachra
I felt drawn to this passage because it reflected how it often feels like our society praises those who create or accomplish certain tasks as great, but ignores those who make those great events possible by maintaining society.
This connects to criticism of the “great man” theory of history, which argues that history can best be studied by focusing on individual people, usually men, who were so central to history that the world would be drastically different if they did not exist.
One thing I’m excited to learn in this course is different ways of using technology to analyze data, especially text. I’m interested in learning more about how modern digital technology can be used to better understand information in ways that were previously not possible or practical.
