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Keynote Speaker
Playing Games: Hegemony as Enemy
Alan Amory
University of
Johannesburg, South Africa
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Podcast
Abstract:
Many argue that the three most influential
writers today are Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins and Noam Chomsky. In Dreaming
in the Middle Ages, Eco defines the phenomena of neomedievalism to confront
pop-culture in a globalised corporate world – the language and structures of
the past are perpetuated into a future where fiefdoms exploit and undermine
civil society. Dawkins, on the other hand uses signs and symbols of science
to explore and decry the rise of fundamentalist belief systems. Chomsky, who
was involved in the development of cognitive science when he challenged
Skinner's behaviourist approach to the study of language, continues to
explore power relations especially those related to American politics.
Therefore modern fiefdoms perpetuate fundamentalism through capitalistic and
religious power structures. Are the relationships between educational
technology, society and teaching and learning, which are part of
Eco-Dawkins-Chomsky world view, perpetuating the past into the future? This
presentation explores the design, development, use and evaluation of
educational technology in relationship to belief systems to identify the
rhetorical acts that are part of the dialectic struggle to liberalise and
democratise educational practices.
Biographical
Information:
Alan Amory is Educational ICT Professor
in the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg after a
brief sojourn as acting as Chief Director for Education Support
Services at the Gauteng Department of Education, Johannesburg, South
Africa. Previously Alan was employed a Director of the Centre for
Information Technology in Higher Education at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South African, where he and a small team
supported the academic community in the use of educational
technology. Alan is the principal author of the Open Learning System
(OLS) developed at and used by the University of KwaZulu-Natal that
in 2005 obtained the Technology Top 100 Award Qualifier for the
University, the first University in South Africa to be identified as
a technologically innovative company. Alan was the recipient for the
prestigious South African Government's Innovation Fund Award to
investigate the use of computer video games in learning which has
been recognised as pioneering work in the field. More recently he
received funding from the Department of Arts and Culture to
investigate the relationship between education, computer video games
and gender. Other awards include Best Teacher Award (University of
Natal, Durban), AVISOM floating trophy for Excellence in Educational
Media Production (The South African Association for Research and
Development in Higher Education and the Educational Media Institute)
and the UNITECH Excellence Award.
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