What’s going on at Zapata Elementary? people, research, and technology in educational spaces : an experiment in experience and possibility

Given the proliferation of technological tools, environments, and supports within the field of education, and the predominant investigative orientation of educational technology researchers being intervention-focused, a minority of scholars have called for other ways of understanding the nuance and contours of educational interactions and technology. This study explores the possibilities for such an orientation at the public elementary school level by maintaining a non-traditional theoretical and wide contextual focus. Toward this end, this study performs and constitutes an experimental mode of address meant to further considerations of educational technology use and educational technology discourse in and around school libraries, second, third, fourth, and fifth grade bilingual, ESL, and regular classrooms. This work is a Deleuzian experiment in New Ethnographic Writing and New Ethnography that also explores aspects of critical design ethnography and the affinity-based design of an educational mashup. Ethnographic attentions were applied over four-year period concentrating on language arts, ESL, and literacy activities. Through performative writing, loose networks of individuals, artifacts, places, processes, movement, and machines are explored.