Tomorrow at 1 PM Eastern on ReclaimTV I will be talking with Audrey Watters about her career as a writer on and off the web. I can’t think of too many people who’ve made as big an impact in edtech in such a small amount of time as Audrey. There’s almost a BHE (before Hack Education) and AHE (after Hack Education) in the field; she was a harbinger of the extraction and exclusion apparatus of the web that was the seemingly inevitable result of the heady days of Web 2.0.
Audrey’s critiques are deeply rooted in deconstructing the mythos of the web by looking at who, why, and, most importantly, how these narratives were framed. Her work is tireless and more often than not her voice and research are more akin to an investigative journalist than edtech blogger. Her broader focus was (and still is) always already social justice, which was often aimed at re-discovering a sense of equity and empowerment that so many of the major networks on the web compromised through algorithmic distortion, extraction, and surveillance. Being so right so early is never easy, and the moniker she earned as EdTech’s Cassandra, while playful, highlights the mythic burdens of seeing so clearly.
In tomorrow’s discussion I hope to engage Audrey in a discussion that tries to trace an arc of her brilliant career, focusing on how her writing as a blogger, investigative journalist, and, ultimately, historian and scholar developed in relationship to the web that was often the fulcrum of her critique. Hope you can tune in tomorrow to hear Audrey’s take on all of this and more, I know I am excited.
Looking forward this, Jefe. To me Audrey transcends the “blogger”, “journalist”, “scholar” labels as just a brilliant Writer.
Yeah, I could have just said that, it would have been easier, but less words for the blog 🙂
Somebody better check the events listing
https://events.reclaimhosting.com/event/audrey-watters-and-jim-groom-blogging-and-writing-4life/
A bunch of us are in Discord, where the event is labeled “Happening Now” with little to do except Groom Jokes