Part I Introduction.- Critical Learning in Digital Networks.- Part II In, Against and Beyond the Network.- Counting On Use of Technology to Enhance Learning.- Free Information: Networked Learning Utopia.- Getting It Out on the Net: Decentralized Networked Learning through Online Pre-Publication.- Part III Virtual Worlds, Networked Realities.- Literally Virtual: The Reality of the Online Teacher.- Virtuality and Fostering Critical Design Thinking.- Moving from Urban to Virtual Spaces and Back.- Part IV Towards a Networked Revolutionary Praxis.- Teacher Heutagogy in the Network Society.- Subversive Epistemologies in Constructing Time and Space in Networked Environments.- The Critical Challenge of Networked Learning.
This ambitious multidisciplinary volume assembles diverse critical-theory approaches to the current and future states of networked learning. Expert contributors expand upon the existing literature by analyzing the ethical aspects of networked learning and the ongoing need for more open, inclusive, and socially engaged educational practice. Chapters explore in depth evolving concepts of real and virtual, the processes of learning in, against, and beyond the internet, and the role of critical pedagogy in improving social conditions. In all, coverage is both realistic and positive about the potential of digital technologies in higher education as well as social and academic challenges on the horizon.
Included among the topics:
Counting on use of technology to enhance learning.
Decentralized networked learning through online pre-publication.
The reality of the online teacher.
Moving from urban to virtual spaces and back.
The project of a virtual emancipatory pedagogy.
Using information technologies in the service of humanity.
It is no longer a question of "Can technology enhance learning"--it's a given that it does.
Critical Learning in Digital Networks offerseducation researchers, teacher educators, instructional technologists, and instructional designers tools and methods for strengthening this increasingly vital interconnection.