Paper short abstract:

Digital devices and technologies are said to improve educational practices. Based on ethnographic research in a German school this paper focuses on the effects of the digital and promises attached, and highlights uncertainties caused in class and beyond.

Paper long abstract:

Digital devices and educational technologies are said to improve classroom practices to guarantee better learning outcomes. Whereas educational processes are experience-based and rather uncertain (Ingold 2018), the algorithm-based tools promise practical certainty, predictability, and objectivity. However, rather little ethnographic research has yet been done how they impact those who use them in class (Cone 2021; Alirezabeigi et. al. 2020). Studies of educational technologies often focus on the digital architecture but tend to neglect what happens in front of the screen. Ethnographic research focuses on the disruptive or innovative but tends to forget the quotidian life of schools (Sims 2017).

Based on a yearlong ethnographic study at a German comprehensive school in 2021 the paper will give insight into the everyday life of a so-called ‘tablet class’. Foremost, the aim is to show how digital devices become co-players in negotiating, mediating, processing, and evaluating certainties in educational practices, e.g., via automation. Secondly, the paper elaborates three different, but entangled aspects of uncertainty. Namely uncertainty on the part of teachers, students and ethnographer caused by intransparency – devices and algorithms seemed to have a mind of their own; furthermore, uncertainty caused by the interdisciplinary design of both team and methodology; and finally, uncertainty caused by the corona virus as yet another invisible but highly influential constituent for all involved in the ethnographic encounter. All three aspects have proven fundamental for an analytical understanding of what is going on in the classroom.