Defining the problem

Proposed solution

We developed a 15-week long curriculum design for high-school-aged youth from minoritized backgrounds that combines social justice and art-activism via the development of digital AR pieces. The curriculum takes students through the process of:

Why an ar exhibition?

• • Students are centered in the learning experience by virtue of being placed in the role of authentic designers (Bower, 2014) and actively creating real objects (Papert, 1988)

  • Critical design makes technologies become platforms for recognizing and challenging power structures (Holbert et al., 2020)

  • Utilizing technologies as humanizing tools harnesses creation, expression, and interaction (Blikstein, 2008)

  • While AR art is incorporeal, it also performs the conventional act of art. In this way, it compels the viewer’s body to engage (Gould, 2013)

• A site's specificity emphasizes local awareness and traditions as a site for cultural sustainability (Thanapornsangsuth & Holbert, 2020)

• In fostering empathetic individuals who have a clear sense of their own identities and perceive and respond effectively to the experience of others, the empathetic museum must similarly have a clear vision of its role as a public institution within its community (Ng et al., 2017)

• AR exhibit as an archiving technology of student voice: considering the archive not as an artifact but as a system, the museum becomes a place to sustain and archive community contribution (Gould, 2013)

REFERences

1. Blikstein, P. (2008). Travels in Troy with Freire: Technology as an agent for emancipation. In P. Noguera & C.A. Torres (Eds.), Social Justice Education for Teachers: Paulo Freire and the possible dream (pp. 205-244). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789460911446_015

2. Bower, M., Howe, C., McCredie, N., Robinson, A. & Grover, D. (2014). Augmented Reality in education – cases, places and potentials. Educational Media International, 51(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2014.889400

3. Edwards, E., Gosden, C., & Phillips, R. (Eds.). (2006). Sensible objects: Colonialism, museums and material culture (1st. ed., Vol. 5). Berg.

4. Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed (MB Ramos, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970)

5. Gould, A. (2013). Invisible visualities: augmented reality art and the contemporary media ecology. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 20(1), 25–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856513514332

6. Holbert, N., Dando, M., & Correa, I. (2020). Afrofuturism as critical constructionist design: building futures from the past and present. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(4), 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1754237

7. Ng, W., Ware, S. M., & Greenberg, A. (2017). Activating Diversity and Inclusion: A Blueprint for Museum Educators as Allies and Change Makers. Journal of Museum Education, 42(2), 142-154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2017.1306664

8. Papert, S. (1988). A critique of technocentrism in thinking about the school of the future. Children in the Information Age (pp. 3-18). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-08-036464-3.50006-5

9. Thanapornsangsuth, S., & Holbert, N. (2020). Culturally relevant constructionist design: Exploring the role of community in identity development. Information and Learning Sciences, 121(11-12), 847-867. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-02-2020-0024