Computational Empowerment for Emerging Technologies in Education

How do we empower coming generations to understand the complexity and impact of digital technology and become co-creators of our future digitalised society? While new technologies are rapidly transforming our everyday lives, investment in educating children about their impact and potentials has just begun, prioritizing a focus on coding skills and computational thinking over quality of life, agency and democracy. Based on ten years of research into digital design and making in education, CEED will address the next societal and educational challenge - of emerging technologies (IoT and AI) - and their role in the digitalisation of society. CEED extends the current focus on computational thinking in education through a design-oriented approach that brings together humanistic, participatory and technical perspectives to develop a theoretical and methodological framework for Computational Empowerment. The framework is developed through an integrated focus on ‘digital design literacy’, technological materials, and principles for learning and designing with emerging technologies in secondary education. In this way, the research will contribute to developing sustainable best-practices at local and national level, while contributing to state-of-the-art in a global research community