Hands on Tech

Hands on Tech: Liberating Technology 

Central to the Everett Program’s pedagogy is the direct use of digital technology for creating social change.  This emphasis is rooted in the understanding that information and communication are critically important in shaping economic opportunity and social mobility, and thus learning to effectively use and produce information technology tools is particularly powerful, whatever changes you want to make in the world.

But our approach doesn’t start from technology, but rather starts from working closely with community partners who are pursuing social justice and environmental sustainability goals in their work. Instead of choosing the latest or most fashionable tech available, we begin by analyzing general organizational needs, understanding its complexity, and then identifying tools that are best suited to fit that need before making a decision. This approach is reflected in the “Universe of Technology” tool of the Everett Program, which leads students and their community partners through a systems-design thinking approach to help identify the best tools to use.  In this way, we believe that technology should be a tool for social and economic liberation, rather than a focus in itself.  Technology for Liberation. 

In parallel to this approach, we also believe everyone can learn to create tech and use the skills for good purposes. Technology is not something owned only by scientists or tech companies. It is important to diversify those who produce tech by making tech learning accessible to people from all backgrounds, both for students who join the program and for the partners we work with.

To do this, our technology training program is rooted in a peer-to-peer and near-to-peer learning model, in which technology classes are designed and taught largely by Everett Fellows, who learned tech skills from previous year’s classes and have applied technology in their own projects with community partners. The near-to-peer environment helps break down barriers to learning for marginalized groups and underrepresented populations. It creates a collaborative space where students feel more comfortable to ask questions about how digital tools work, how to learn them by themselves or with other people, and which tools are best suited for solving social problems of communities they are working with.   Overall, our approach is not so much a matter of learning specific technical skills, rather, gaining confidence and motivation to develop technology self-learning.  In this way–by working with students from underrepresented background, predominantly in non-STEM fields, and helping them build confidence in their own technology learning–we liberate technology itself from the disproportionate control of technology companies and the white, male cultures and systems which still predominate in those spaces. 

Building this confidence and motivation for technology learning required careful incremental steps, often starting from easy tools and gradually advancing through more advanced skills.  It involves sharing and celebrating accomplishments all along the way.  It involves putting students into positions of teaching others from the very beginning, in group learning contexts with role models that come from similar underrepresented backgrounds. This helps consolidate knowledge, since”you never learn something as well as when you have to teach it to someone else”.  It also helps students move into ‘brave spaces’ of learning, by removing the intimidation of having ‘experts’, acknowledging anxiety in moving into unfamiliar roles, and providing multiple support systems–other students, fellows, staff, faculty and alumni–to help students in that technology learning process.