Trista Ding, linked above, and I both chose to interconnect our utopia and dystopia speculative narrative for task twelve. I wonder if Trista has similar thoughts about the fantasy of a true utopia as I reflected upon based on her approach of toppling the utopia narrative discussed in part one. I chose to use Google Slides to display my narrative which let me more clearly intersperse my narratives, while Trista chose to use UBC blogs to display her narratives. I liked how Trista described the testing and learning environment in detail. This is something that my narrative lacked but was difficult due to my choice of having the story span decades (using the affordances of timelines and clarifying titles in Google slides). Trista, by choosing to focus on only a single day and character, was able to make her narrative concise, easy to follow and with rich details (without needing images or timelines). Both of our narratives leave the reader in some ambiguity as A.D.’s surgery is not discussed and in my narrative “abroad” is never defined.
Both of us struggle to see greater inclusive education in our narratives, likely due to the lack of support for children with disabilities currently in the classroom and a drive for efficiency and GDP growth from those in power rather than a focus on social supports. Both of us also see continuing socio-economic inequality in education as I mention differences in district schools and Tricia mentions a school entrance test and algorithm based at least partially on parental education and income. Again this may be reflected in what we see in the current classroom.
Some elements of the Utopia we share in our narratives such as integration of technology, earlier specialization of education, constructivism, and maker culture. I found it interesting that in Trista’s narrative that lecture and test based instruction is ongoing except with a personal robot rather than a human teacher. I did something similar with lecture being replaced by interactive modules. Using a human teacher to simply lecture is easily replaced by technology, including technology we have had for 100 years such as the radio. Earlier specialization in Trista’s narrative seems to include an element of student choice and occurs on the first day of school, whereas specialization in my narrative occurs at 12 years old and is completely driven by algorithm with no student choice. Earlier specialization has the possibility to enhance efficiency but leads to potential gaps in general knowledge or difficulty changing jobs (not an issue in our algorithm driven narratives).