This essay is the first component of a multi-stage research project, we reporting on findings from several interviews with founders of PECE; those who envisioned, funded, and manifested PECE from the very beginning. Lucy and Hillary detail what the founders hope(d) for PECE, and how these hopes speak to the user experience. They also offer several areas for further interrogation, as well as some intial design ideas.
Nadine Tanio and Fred Ariel Hernandez are conducting an ongoing study of K-12 school governance in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California during COVID-19 (see our their in progress here).
Preliminary findings point to schools employing multiple approaches when utilizing and engaging remote learning technology that in turn support different models of teaching. For instance, some school administrations more explicitly prioritized social and emotional learning via technology in elementary school (kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade) than in middle or high school. There are also differences between public and independent school sites in the flexibility of adjusting approaches during the school term.
In addition, their work reveals how public schools during the pandemic are resources for the Commons that extend beyond K-12 education. For instance, many school sites in the San Gabriel Valley have become distribution centers for food insecure people. There have also been proposals to use closed public schools as sites for creating temporary shelters for the housing insecure. Many other campuses are being proposed as community COVID-19 vaccination sites.
Ariel and Nadine are inviting all PECE colleagues, regardless of geographic/national location, to contribute to this study by sharing their stories and anecdotal experiences with K-12 remote learning as teachers, parents/caregivers, students, and family during the pandemic. Please contact either Ariel (fahernandez@ucla.edu) or Nadine (ntanio@uci.edu). You can also add an annotation to their essay.
The Energy Rights Project has completed data analysis from surveys conducted in May and June 2020. We are now preparing an article for Energy Research and Social Science that reimagines the terms of ‘energy literacy’.
As part of this work, we have curated a series titled Engaging Energy that narrate participants’ responses to our survey questions. The accounts documented in the Engaging Energy series are not analyzed, but present in relatively raw terms what participants' said about their relationships to their homes, energy use, and COVID-19, as well as their knowledge and perspectives on energy systems in society. You can read Rae’s account here as an example. Please email Ali Kenner (ali.kenner@gmail.com) for access to the full collection.
The Energy in COVID-19 working group has also published two additional media briefs, for November and December 2020. The image to the left is taken from a study on U.S. residential energy consumption and was included in their November media brief.
The panel “Everything open for everyone? How Open Science is challenging and expanding ethnographic research practices” will also include a paper by PECE Design Group Member Tim Schütz on the ongoing collaborative project on Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group and the role of civic data archives within. Lina Franken will give insights into her research on the ways ethnographers are opening up their research by using digital tools and platforms.
The panel will take place online within the SIEF2021, “Breaking the Rules: Power, Participation, Transgression”, 19-24 June 2021.
The Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography (PECE: pronounced “peace”) is an open source (Drupal-based) digital platform that supports multi-sited, cross-scale ethnographic and historical research. The platform links researchers in new ways, enables new kinds of analyses and data visualization, and activates researchers’ engagement with public problems and diverse audiences. PECE is at the center of a research project that explores how digital infrastructure can be designed to support collaborative hermeneutics.
Nadine Tanio and Fred Ariel Hernandez are conducting an ongoing study of K-12 school governance in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California during COVID-19 (see our their in progress here).
Preliminary findings point to schools employing multiple approaches when utilizing and engaging remote learning technology that in turn support different models of teaching. For instance, some school administrations more explicitly prioritized social and emotional learning via technology in elementary school (kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade) than in middle or high school. There are also differences between public and independent school sites in the flexibility of adjusting approaches during the school term.
In addition, their work reveals how public schools during the pandemic are resources for the Commons that extend beyond K-12 education. For instance, many school sites in the San Gabriel Valley have become distribution centers for food insecure people. There have also been proposals to use closed public schools as sites for creating temporary shelters for the housing insecure. Many other campuses are being proposed as community COVID-19 vaccination sites.
Ariel and Nadine are inviting all PECE colleagues, regardless of geographic/national location, to contribute to this study by sharing their stories and anecdotal experiences with K-12 remote learning as teachers, parents/caregivers, students, and family during the pandemic. Please contact either Ariel (fahernandez@ucla.edu) or Nadine (ntanio@uci.edu). You can also add an annotation to their essay.