Dear cool person, you're invited to an evening filled with some drinking and thinking!
In this month’s EMW Drink Salon on Tech & Ethics, we will explore a topic close to home: EDUCATION.
Speakers: Dr. Debbie Chachra, Netia McCray, Meredith Thompson, Will McFarlane & Katie Gradowski
Community Curator: Stine An
There will of course be refreshing beverages and delicious snacks.
Featured Beverage:
Teacher's Pet (hot mulled cider w/ rum; non-alcoholic versions available)
We'll have some light snacks and drinks (boozy & non-boozy) for you as well!
RSVP is required for entrance. 21+ event. Bring your ID.
Seating is limited to 60 guests.
Suggested donation: $8 or pay what you can at door.
Your donations at the door go directly to help cover the drinks and food, and support the community that makes Drink Salon possible!
Education, whether formal or informal, serves as a system for reproducing society. We are all subject to and subjected to an education. Historically, education as an institution has reflected and recreated social structures, cultural values, and ideologies by forming or making attempts to form future citizens, workers, and—more recently—consumers.
With this is mind, we ask—what kind of society and world are we creating today with education? Our speakers with approach this question with a focus on the following angles regarding education and technology: education technology (or ed tech), technology education, theories of pedagogy, systems and methods of schooling as technology, and education as a tool for reinforcing or transforming ideology.
In the course of the salon, we hope to have a chance to also think about why education is so important. What is the purpose of an education in the Information Age?
The answer that resonates with the most so far is that education can cultivate in the individual the capacity to exercise an informed agency over their own life. How does our current technology landscape and our relationship with technology help or hinder this cultivation of informed agency?
— Stine An, Community Curator
The EMW Drink Salon on Tech and Ethics brings together a community and a supportive space to spark challenging discussions on the role of technology in our everyday lives. Each month, we invite featured speakers to lead a conversation. We encourage salon guests to make new connections and to think critically about how technology relates to some of the most important questions we ask humanity.
Recent Drink Salons include:
#EMWDrinkSalon | @TechethicsDS
Scroll down for speaker/ organizer bios & a schedule for the night!
Professor of Engineering @ Olin College of Engineering
Dr. Debbie Chachra is a Professor of Engineering at Olin College of Engineering, where she was one of the early faculty.
Her research interests include materials science (particularly biological materials), engineering education, and infrastructure.
She works with faculty worldwide to help foster new ways of teaching engineering, and she speaks and writes widely on education, gender, and technology.
Newsletter: tinyletter.com/metafoundry
Twitter: @debcha
Founder / Executive Director of MBADIKA (http://mbadika.org/)
Netia McCray is a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and serves as the Founder and Executive Director of Mbadika, a social venture dedicated to fostering youth-driven innovation and entrepreneurship. As a speaker, Ms. McCray has spoken on youth-driven innovation and entrepreneurship on behalf of the U.S. State Department, the Lean Startup Conference, Millennium Campus Conference, and at various hubs around the world.
Social Media:
@Netiamccray/ @Mbadika
Facebook: Mbadika
Co-Founder, Parts & Crafts
Katie was a critical theory nerd before she decided to make the leap from books to people.
After a long flirtation with public radio she spent a year working for Occupy Boston outreach, and then stumbled happily into the world of alternative education, where she’s been tinkering with electronics and hanging out with 8-year-olds ever since.
Links:
Co-Founder, Parts & Crafts
Will founded Parts and Crafts in 2009 after dropping out of college and working in alternative education, ice cream, architecture, and software design.
Since then he’s had the pleasure of watching an idea grow into a community and the joy of seeing an incredible number of amazing kids grow up with it. In his spare time he enjoys doing pretty much the same things he does at Parts and Crafts — writing software, teaching friends, building things, playing and designing games.
Links:
Research Scientist at the Teaching Systems Lab (TSL) & STEP
Meredith Thompson is dedicated to inspiring enthusiasm for science among people of all ages through creative, engaging curriculum, and finding innovative ways of measuring the impact of educational inno-vation. Her research focuses on the influence of collaboration and creativity in STEM learn-ing environments and the integration of mixed methods in education re-search. She has designed a number of science explorations for kids in-cluding Soundscience Fun!, an interactive pre-sentation on the physics of musical instruments that has been featured on the PBS television show “Curious George”. Meredith and her twin sister Chris write and perform acoustic music together (www.cmthompson.com).
Family Makerspace and Community Workshop
Parts and Crafts is a member-supported, 501(c)(3) family makerspace and community workshop based in Somerville, MA. Their programs encourage kids to play, think, make, and learn through the exploration of the arts, science, computer programming, and engineering – a cluster of disciplines they refer to as “the creative application of technical skills.” They run school-vacation camps, a full-time school-alternative program, and afterschool and weekend classes and workshops, open-shop hours and other community and family events.
Speaker: Dr. Debbie Chachra (Professor of Engineering, Olin College of Engineering)
Talk Title: “Technology in Education, Educating for Technology”
Talk Summary: My pedagogical focus is rethinking how we educate technologists. This means both thinking about what skills and approaches will be used by technologists in the future, but also about how technologies affect what we do in the classroom.
Topics: the design of learning experiences and environments, motivation, self-efficacy, the role of the Internet in learning, MOOCs, project-based learning, the pedagogies around ‘making’ and ‘hacking.’
Speaker: Meredith Thompson (Teaching Systems Lab & STEP)
Talk Title: "Full STEAM Ahead: Providing Context for STEAM Education's Present and Future"
Talk Summary: From traditional to flipped, standard to personalized, textbook to game-based.....What is the current state of STEM and STEAM education? What does the future hold? How can teachers and professionals be prepared for the future of STEM/STEAM?
Topics: influence of collaboration and creativity in STEM learning environments, the integration of mixed methods in education research
Speaker: Katie Gradowski & Will McFarlane (Co-Founders, Parts & Crafts)
Talk Title: "Freeschools and Hackerspaces: Do It Yourself!"
Talk Summary: Five years ago, DIY spaces for hands-on education seemed like a pipe dream. Today it's mainstream, with K-12 maker ed programs at the leading edges of discussions about STEM and STEAM tech education. How do we create these spaces? How do we make them inclusive? How do we use them to build power in community? And critically, how do we keep it real and true to mission?
Topics: DIY education, Hackerspaces, community makerspaces, inclusivity, hands-on education
Speaker: Netia McCray (Founder / Executive Director of MBADIKA)
Talk Title: "The Transition of Communities from Consumers of Innovation to Innovators"
Talk Summary: No matter whether in the halls of government, school board meetings, or Fortune 500 Boardrooms, the desire for one's work or community to be seen as "innovative" has driven a call for greater STEM education and commitments to building a talent pipeline to produce the competitive workforce required for innovation to take place. However, discussions around innovation rarely touch upon the required transition from dismissing (and even sabotaging) innovation from certain communities to accepting and supporting innovative activities in those communities.
Topics: DIY, Maker Education, Creativity, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Community Activism, STEM
Moderators: Stine An
Panelists:
- Dr. Debbie Chachra (Professor of Engineering at Olin College of Engineering)
- Katie Gradowski (Co-Founder, Parts & Crafts)
- Will Mcfarlane (Co-Founder, Parts & Crafts)
- Netia McCray (Founder / Executive Director, MBADIKA)
- Meredith Thompson (Research Scientist at Teaching Systems Lab & STEP)
Submit Questions Here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/DS-Education-Panel
/// LOCATION & PARKING ///
Red line: Take the T to Central and walk towards Harvard Square on Mass Ave, or take the 1 bus down the street.
Free street parking is available but typically difficult to find after 6PM on Fridays. Visitors can pay for parking in Central Square, or take the T. EMW Bookstore is right between two chair accessible stops, Harvard Square and Central Square on the Red Line.
/// ACCESSIBILITY ///
Gallery space is chair accessible. We will prioritize chair access in the aisles. Please find or contact an EMW Staff member for assistance with entry through front door. Two single-stall, gender-neutral restrooms are available, one up a flight of stairs and one on the main floor with a step from the main entrance. Please come fragrance free! For the health and safety of organizers, panelists, and other attendees, we ask you not to wear scented products or clothing that has recently been smoked in. For more information: http://www.peggymunson.com/mcs/fragrancefree.html
Lychee's goal is to use music as a tool to build a distinct atmosphere and to create connections amidst dancers over shared emotional experience. She loves to bring glimmers of sentimentality into a harsher musical narrative, blending hints of melody and vocals into raw techno assaults as moments of light and reprieve.
