In order to explore the ways in which education technology has increased its use of “care” to market its wares, we are collecting case studies of websites, emails, and ads to create an “is it care?” Twine game. Twine is an open-source tool for making narrative games. We will be building off the framework of care that we introduced in our OER 2020 blog post Weaponization of Care, drawing from Luke Stark and Karen Levy’s “The Surveillant Consumer” (2018), Nel Noddings’ virtuous care (2013), as well as from our conversations with educators and artists over the past year.

As so many educators and students pivoted to remote learning due to a health crisis, how did the educational technology field react? In a time when care is exponentially needed, how was it also manipulated? We saw surveillance technologies strongly pushed as the answer to keeping integrity in online learning. In what ways do we make these moves more transparent and open? How can shifts in agency and creativity help create a more trusting and caring learning environment?

We will use our game as a starting point for open pedagogy projects where students can build on and further explore issues around education, technology, and care. Our conversations will focus on students asking and addressing questions around their agency and lack of agency with their data as they use different online software and platforms.

In this session, we will share our game with participants in the following ways:

1. Reflect on what we learned making it

2. Discuss using it as a open education tool to explore the ways surveillance is presented to students

3. Gather ideas for next steps