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There has been lots of discussion about camera-required versus camera-optional in class, but I don't think I've seen an analysis yet that looks at how virtual backgrounds can be yet another marker of social status. 1/ #failuretodisrupt
Paul Attewell proposed that the digital divide had two parts, access and usage, and even when we close gaps in access, there can still be differences in opportunities between more and less affluent students. People often hope edtech closes gaps, but it more often opens them 2/
Affluent kids are more likely to have access to quiet, private workspaces, that also communicate social status through markers of consumption positioned in frame. Poverty-impacted students are less likely to have access to such spaces in the real world. But it gets worse. 3/
Zoom's virtual background function only works well on recent computers with a minimal graphics threshold. My not-that-old macbook pro doesn't cut it, I had to buy a green screen for it to sort of work. 4/
So if you can afford a laptop of recent vintage, you can transport your image anywhere. You can become, in Tressie Cottom's term, a roaming autodidact, present in edtech systems but free and divorced from the bounds of particular places and communities. 5/
If you can't afford such a machine, then your only option for presenting yourself is the physical world that you are actually in. 6/
School buildings do a remarkable (if imperfect job) of flattening these social distinctions, when we tell all students to sit down in the same crummy desks bolted to the floor. 7/
When this is all over, sadly, we're going to have piles of research of how our most vulnerable, most marginalized students were taught, surveilled, and policed in zoom school very differently than affluent, white students. 8/
In the meantime, I hope we can be vigilant about looking at emerging practices through the lens of anti-racism and equity. And don't make kids turn on their cameras if they don't want. Hold them accountable for engagement, and offer multiple pathways to engage. 9/
