Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 51 seconds

Crossed the Equator to talk Open Pedagogy, Digital Literacies and Equity in #edtech

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 51 seconds

Thanks to a generous invitation from Laura Czerniewicz, director of CILT at UCT, I am here in Cape Town, South Africa for a few days to keynote an event she’s organizing with the incredibly generous Sukaina Walji and Rada Mogliacci (whom I have yet to meet) and give a workshop and seminar at UCT as well inshallah.

Cape Town has been amazing so far. People everywhere say hello and have such genuine smiles. I know the hospitality industry is like this, I come from a country that thrives on tourism, but this feels more than usual. Plus, everyone asks you quite quickly where you are from, and are so enthusiastic when we say we are from Egypt. Ok, this is also normal,but it is different when it’s a fellow African taking pride in your Egyptianness rather than a Westerner thinking about your history. I don’t know how to explain it.

Sukaina Walji really showed me hospitality way beyond anything I had ever seen before. She and her husband met me at the hotel a few hours after we got here, with South African SIM cards for both my husband and myself, and took my daughter and I for a walk around the hotel grounds AND she even got us yummy healthy snacks to keep us going til we could get out and about. I mention this here because I plan to talk about intentionally equitable hospitality in my keynote at some point, and felt like what Sukaina did made me think a lot more about it.

One of the things that concerns me about this event altogether is that I am addressing a fellow African audience rather than my regular Western audience. And it’s a context I know only slightly from colleagues at UCT mainly… and we share some similarities but I don’t want to assume too much.

I also had plans to use some of the very little of SA culture I know in my keynote… and I actually checked some of my knowledge of Zulu and apparently also Xhosa today to see if he thinks it would be appropriate to use. My sample of one approves. I think!

Anyway. I need to get some sleep. If you’re up and available, here is the info to join in for some of this.

I’ve created a page on my blog to share all the info on all of my things this week. Here it is:

https://blog.mahabali.me/portfolio/research-scholarship/keynotes/uct-keynote-and-more/

The first event is a workshop on open pedagogy, and that won’t be livestreamed, but the two others are livestreamed, so I thought I should also share information on how to join the livestreams:

  • August 14th 1pm Cape Town (noon UTC): A seminar on Reimagining Digital Literacies from a Feminist Perspective in a Postcolonial Context – livestreamed via e/Merge Africa. To join the session virtually, sign up here. I expect to be able to engage a virtual audience for this one. Inshallah. Updated: link to watch here.
  • August 15th at 11am Cape Town (10am UTC) keynote at the Symposium: Making a plan – the reality of growing new forms of digital teaching and learning provision (organized by Laura Czerniewicz and Sukaina Walji). My keynote is entitled Equity Before Innovation: Challenges & Opportunities for Digital Education in a Globalized World. To join the livestreamed version via e/Merge Africa, sign up here. Updated: link to watch here.

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