Please find a description of this workshop below and contact me if you are interested in bringing this learning opportunity to your campus or organization.
There has recently been renewed interest in low- or no-tech teaching, sometimes also called to as “analog teaching”. Some potential reasons for this renewed interest include:
- Increasing recognition of the downsides of internet-connected devices in the classroom
- Instructors are concerned that the temptation to take shortcuts on important learning tasks using AI is too great
- As we are oversaturated with digital content at present and we see that fascination with AI’s capabilities can easily slide into disinterest in the hard parts of learning and being in community with other people, instructors want to make their classrooms into refuges from the pulls of the digital world.
However, classroom technology also provides the basic infrastructure for accessibility in the classroom. For example, electronic text especially has made information available to people with a wide range of disabilities, and many laptop and handheld computers enable access to information and participation that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. This workshop and discussion will ask an important emerging question: How can those instructors who wish to explore the potential benefits of low-tech pedagogy take accessibility seriously? Participants can expect to leave this workshop with a set of recommendations for improving accessibility in low-tech classrooms and their own plan for how to consider access needs in their course designs as they plan for future semesters.
