Pluralistic Computing Learning and its Impact on Modern Social Life

Computational techniques, digital media and all kinds of smart applications have deeply implanted in our modern lives. The way we interact and learn to use them greatly influences our social life. Like what Sherry Turkle has shared in 2012 TED talk “Connected, but alone?”, the excessive usage of mobile devices and all the social apps has turned modern people into caring more the action of connecting to people than caring about the real social interaction. In particular, the new generation, who were born after 21st century, grew up with all these computing devices, where their social life and learning attitude are mostly dominated by the way they interact with and learn to use the technology. Thus, inspecting the pedagogies of computing learning and how much they influence modern social life becomes a crucial topic.

Matt Ratto in his “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life” has derived the critical making ideas from its attempt to discuss the relationship between technologies and social life. Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert’s “Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices within the computer culture” focuses heavily on the computing learning pluralism, where the approaches to programming that differ by personalities and inclination should not be limited and unified, in order to develop a new computer culture with new social construction of the computer. Henry Jenkins’ “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” points out the great portion of teens’ involvement in media content creation and sharing through the internet, which forms participatory culture among them.

I am particularly inspired by Turkle and Papert’s opinions on how a canonical approach to learning computer programming has long been taken for granted and constrained both the development of computer culture and learners’ relation and attitude toward technologies. As an engineering background student, I was not bothered by the situation of forcing myself to try controlling programming language through structure and planning. However, it is a true case for many learners with more humanity background, who usually have different approaches to learning programming, e.g. by “perfecting the smallest ‘little bits of pieces’ and then building up”. This situation has long been neglected for that educators think it is the right and only way to approach computer language by structuring and planning, where every learner should change their thought and reasoning in order to easily follow the rules.

However, as technologies become more and more influential and integrated to our lives, learning to interact with computer or technology is more than learning a tool. The internet social culture that computer and technologies have together formed is inseparable to our real social life, where its operation and expression represents ours. Like Ratto emphasized in his critical making experiment, the shared acts of making itself is an important process for conversation and reflection, enhancing conceptual understanding of critical sociotechnical issues. It is not only an academic methodology in order to study the relationship between technologies and social life, but actually a crucial pedagogical concept for learning and interacting through computer language and media. As mentioned in Jenkins’ paper, by being involved in using these skills and media, teens are actively involved in a participatory culture, where they have to get access to learn required skills and experiences to become full participants and gain new literacies such as social skills and cultural competencies.

The computer becomes an expressive medium and forms a social culture that deeply influences our social life. Ratto, Turkle and Papert, and Jenkins in their research focus on different aspects of computing learning, but together bring the emphasis on learning computer skills with pluralistic pedagogy to assist diversifying computer culture and to enhance students’ involvement in participatory culture, which compose key factors of our modern social life. Despite our social life being dominated by technology, various learning approaches of computer language and computer’s social culture are keys to contribute to a diversified modern social value.