Digital World Citizens:Experimenting communities and open laboratories in a global perspective
Klaus Thestrup · 2021
DIGITAL WORLD CITIZENS Experimenting communities and open laboratories in a global perspective The question Corona has been a challenge to education but might also give online education, blended and networked learning (NLEC et al, 2021) some new possibilities, that might extend beyond the pandemic. I have since 2004 conducted practical research in kindergartens and preschools, where children, pedagogues and pre-school teachers have been involved in exchanging, experimenting and playing across time and space using digital media. (Thestrup, 2019; Thestrup et al, 2015). The basic research question has been the same: How can children and professionals in pedagogical institutions communicate, experiment and play together globally? The pedagogy Based upon the research I have developed a pedagogical framework to communicate, experiment and play together. First of all, the group of children and staff are Experimenting Communities (Caprani & Thestrup, 2010; Dittert, Thestrup & Robinson, 2021). That is a group, where the core of the activities in the group are primarily to experiment and not only to repeat existing everyday practice around the use of digital media. The point is to invent new practice that becomes part of everyday life in the community. The community experiments in Open Laboratories (Thestrup & Robinson, 2016), that are open in three ways. In the open lab it is not decided in advance what materials, tools, processes and spaces to use. This means firstly that digital and analogue materials are intertwined in processes, where it no longer matters, where it came from, but what the actual combination consists of. Secondly, physical and virtual spaces are linked together in processes, where both the physical and the virtual space are important. In both spaces, the materials, tools, bodies, narratives and the space itself are unfolded according to the possibilities and the intention but they also support, inspire and potentially change the processes in the other spaces. This might be supported by a media ecological thinking where different kinds of software are given a specific use or abandoned when no longer needed (Thestrup, Gislev, & Elving, 2018). Thirdly the open laboratory is ready to be inspired and challenged by others outside the laboratory locally, regionally or globally. In one laboratory the children and the professionals might play and experiment in ways others do not. The professionals might have the same or different views on pedagogy, children and society. But that does not mean the possible differences are permanent. During the encounter views might change or common ways of interacting and reflecting upon each other´s practices can be established and the single institution might become part of different network. The goal need not be that everybody involved copy what others are doing but that they transform it for their own needs and possibly for the common interest in the network (Thestrup & Pedersen, 2020). The perspective The experimenting communities and the open laboratories can give children and professionals the opportunity to become digital world citizens through playing, communicating and experimenting (More on the subject in Global Studies of Childhood, 2020) and through that offer education and online education some new developments post-pandemic. Keywords Experimenting communities, open laboratories, digital world citizens, online education References Caprani, O. & Thestrup, K. (2010). 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