In this talk, Josie Fraser looks at some of the specific social and political contexts of open practice, and digital environmental factors that shape, restrict and enable collaboration and connection. Participatory digital environments are complex and contradictory spaces – they can be empowering, but also dangerous. This talk highlights key issues relating to online anonymity, trolling, and self-regulation that educational organisations, providers and individuals need to be aware of and engaged with, in the context of supporting all educators and learners to work, share and learn openly online.
Josie Fraser
Josie Fraser is a UK-based Social and Educational Technologist. She has worked with government, schools, further education providers and universities, promoting and developing the effective and innovative use of ICT and e-learning policy and practice in the UK and internationally. Working across the broad field of educational technology, she is primarily interested in digital literacy and open education, and in the ways in which social technologies can be used to support learning, organisational change and community development.
Since 2010, she has lead on technology for Leicester City Council’s £340million Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme. She is responsible for setting, promoting and delivering an agenda for educational transformation in relation to the use of technology within schools. She is a Trustee of Wikimedia UK, and is currently also producing the new Government Equalities Office funded national cyberbullying guidance, on behalf of Childnet International. You can find her on Twitter as@josiefraserand blogging at josiefraser.com.
Village Tales is a participatory film made by four young women in rural India who were selected to take part in an Indian government video journalism project.
On the basis of that description, the AHRC-award winner might sound like a film documenting a group of people making a film. But it is also – more importantly perhaps – about how the process of filming made them.
Village Tales is a participatory film made by four young women in rural India who were selected to take part in an Indian government video journalism project.
On the basis of that description, the AHRC-award winner might sound like a film documenting a group of people making a film. But it is also – more importantly perhaps – about how the process of filming made them.
While films documenting hardship in the developing world may be familiar, Village Tales offers something different. It doesn’t preach. Or curate our experience. There is an edit, of course. But the content is essentially an unscripted and unvarnished portrayal of communities on the cusp of change from the perspective of those at the heart of the experience.
More than that, perhaps, it shows how the presence of the camera itself can acts as a catalyst for change and a source of empowerment for the women.
“I hope people are moved by what they see. There’s humour in there. But real sadness as well. I want the audience to empathise with the the four women in the film. More than anything, I want them to understand that, while we live in very different societies – we are materially much richer, for example – we are all essentially the same. We all feel proud of our children; we all worry about their future.
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Josie Fraser is a UK-based Social and Educational Technologist. She has worked with government, schools, further education providers and universities, promoting and developing the effective and innovative use of ICT and e-learning policy and practice in the UK and internationally. Working across the broad field of educational technology, she is primarily interested in digital literacy and open education, and in the ways in which social technologies can be used to support learning, organisational change and community development.
