Abstract:

The times surely “are a changing” as B. Dylan noted so many years ago. But change comes with various types of troubles. And the troubles of 2018 are clearly disruptive. One source of disruption is the rapidly changing nature of work. Automation and even robots will play a key role in eliminating jobs and creating new very different types of jobs than is the case presently. Those who want to work and can work will need to figure out how to retool for these largely unknown jobs. The environment provides another disruptive force. Some of the biggest and most powerful hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and droughts along with temperature extremes have disrupted have all created chaos in 2018 with significant loss of life, homes, and community infrastructure as well as power, food and water. These environmental disruptions have cost governments so much money that in some cases has resulted in large communities that will be devastated for years. And yet these troubles pale in comparison to the continuing and emerging conflicts between differing cultural groups. Poverty, political and religious repression as well as economic collapse and globalization have caused vast migrations that have brought together cultures resulting in violence and increased hatred.

Troubled times require bold measures, imagination and the sort of inventiveness seen in some sectors of the global economy. However there is no way to address these troubles fundamentally without schooling being part of the solution. This is so because of the role schooling can play to enable large sections of the world population to develop a caring attitude to our environment, to understand the changing nature of work and prepare students to be future inventors and creative artists that use their new found skills to adjust and find meaningful work within the new emergent economies. And schooling will not be reinvented until we reinvent the nature of teaching and teachers. This paper advocates for the way technology can be used to create spaces of difference that are at the core of that is required for this type of transformation. While it is understood all too well that technology can and is used to reproduce inequalities and even greater divides, it is also the case that technology can be an amazing force for equality and democracy if it is designed for such a role and is placed in the hands of future teachers who are ready willing and able to demonstrate the power of schooling to further social justice--a linkage between the needs of our troubled global society, schooling and teacher education. In particular in this paper we will show the research results of a technological approach developed by the author--divvy.live-- that is not only designed to further social justice but has been field tested in several differing university settings for over 2 years. In particular, this paper focuses in the need for and the importance of student-student learning, empathy, revisioning of the classroom. space to connect inside actors and outside actors, the development of critical thinking skills, and finally understanding of self and other through the use of IAM videos. The power of these types learning would not have been possible without the use of the divvy platform. In making the case for technology used in this way included in this research are the voices of students who actually went through the program

Keywords:

Teacher education, technology, transformation, social justice.