BELTA Day '20: Tyson Seburn, Plenary Speaker

The info ‘instashare’: its impact on belief and our power as language teachers

Tyson Seburn

Plenary Session
Length: 60-minutes

Shermer (2012, p. 135) suggests that when information is shared with us, “belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity.” In our current age of digital information, we all consume news, entertainment, and even educational materials, quite often through rapid-fire instashares online.
This delivery paired with our natural instincts can significantly increase the challenge of not only locating what we’re looking for, but also evaluating conflicting messages about what’s true.
In this talk, we will explore how information is produced, shared, and conveyed through social media; the impact instashares have on our abilities to decipher context and make evaluations; and the power (or arguably the responsibility) we have as educators to augment the role of language technician with emancipatory guide.

Biography

Tyson Seburn, Canada

Tyson Seburn is an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) instructor and Assistant Academic Director of International Programs at New College, University of Toronto. He holds an MA Educational Technology & TESOL from the University of Manchester.
His main interest focuses on identity and its various impacts on teacher development. He is currently also exploring inclusive and critical pedagogy and their applications to language teaching contexts.
He writes about these interests in an EAP discussion group: #tleap (bit.do/tleap), in his blog: 4CinELT (fourc.ca) and through his role as Coordinator of the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group committee (tdsig.org).
He is the author of Academic Reading Circles (The Round, 2015).