Conclusion / Future

Thank you for taking the time to visit my portfolio. While this may be the end of the website, it is definitely just the beginning for me, and I feel fortunate to have learned so much in a single year at Penn GSE, an institution that values equitable access to education for all people. Starting with the ideological model of literacy, and moving on to our own specific 'buckets' of theory as per research interest, my peers and I have come a long way since August 2023. I am glad to be situated in this community of practice, that knowledge alone makes me glad for the future - pursuing social justice ends ine ducation can be daunting for the lone educator, but with my peers scattered across the globe, I will always have friends to share critical insights, de-stress after administrative hurdles, and celebrate our collective success(es).

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With critical, multimodal literacy, there are tensions that are situated around a nexus of power, race and privilege: some cannot access technology due to weak infrastructures, and the distribution of wealth with a few in the world. It is well and good to promote Web 2.0 literacy for classrooms, teachers and students - but what if there is no electricity or even solar infrastructure available? Pakistan currently faces a power crises which peaks in the summer months - when there is "load-shedding", the fanciest of  gadgets will not work as there is no power supply. Distance learning will remain a fantasy if students cannot afford tech., and electric supply lines are not equitably distributed. Electric cars will not be charged in the summer months with a power pitfall, despite the heavy rains to power turbines - as there iis little infrastructure to even save the run-off water.

 

Should some communities prioritize which technologies they invest in - and is that fair? At a recent Fulbright conference on the issue of sustainable development, this question was raised - and one of the panelists spoke about the lack of access to public transport in her neighborhood in Seattle. Her neighbors could not afford electric vehicles, so why would providing charging hubs be a priority for officials? Do politicians pay attention to the needs of local communities in terms of their infrastructural needs?

 

This comes from the US, so you can well imagine the state of countries still developing and facing debt crises in this economy. How can we address issues of inequitable development that makes access harder for certain communities? What of the access that White, middle and higher income individuals command, which situates access to said infrastrucutural development around pockets of wealth? And what of the search engine results that privilege certain points of view over others - algorithms too are situated around racial and political tensions. These questions of policy and the tensions that they entail are areas I would like to focus on in more detail.