Description

What happens when an early adopter of ed tech steps back from its use in favour of pre-digital technologies? Erin Macleod, PhD, an English teacher at Vanier College, shares her mindful approach to tech use in the classroom. Drawing on 25 years of experience as a teacher, as well as her background in Communications, Erin describes her reasons for this shift: the distractions engendered by social media and smartphones and the need for alternative, embodied learning in an AI age. She discusses some of the creative activities and assessments she has designed to engage students, promote communal learning, and sharpen their critical thinking about course content, technology, and the role it plays in students’ lives.

About our Guest

Erin MacLeod is a Montreal-based journalist, educator, cultural critic and international development professional whose writing and work spans music, identity, and postcolonial perspectives. Her journalism has appeared in major outlets including the New York Times, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and the Globe and Mail. She is also the Jury Foreperson for the Polaris Music Prize.

MacLeod's writing is distinguished by its depth and cultural insight. She has explored the socio-political dimensions of music, such as discussing soundsystem culture and inheritance for the New York Review of Books, discussing lyrical changes in the Canadian national anthem for NPR, and considering the television program Alone as a means of considering loneliness and social distancing. Her coverage includes live performances, like reviews of the Osheaga festival and Molchat Doma in Montreal for Northern Transmissions, and profiles of artists such as Hill Kourkoutis, the first woman nominated for a Juno Award in recording engineering, for CBC Music. MacLeod's work reflects a commitment to exploring the intersections of music, culture, and identity, offering readers nuanced perspectives on contemporary issues.

Beyond journalism, MacLeod is an academic with a PhD in Communications from McGill University and a Master's in English Literature from the University of Toronto. She teaches literature and liberal arts at Vanier College in Montreal. Her book, Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the Search for the Promised Land (NYU Press, 2014), examines the intersections of race, migration, and cultural identity. She also is an international development consultant, working on monitoring, evaluation and learning practices with organizations such as Cuso International, Oxfam, the Equality Fund, Care International and WUSC.