Daren Okafo - Educational Technologist

About Me.

For almost twenty years, I've worked to develop a range of knowledge and skills (both technical and otherwise) that center around the practice of designing and building progressive and critical adult learning systems - ones focused on leveraging the inherent creativity, collaboration, learning and knowledge management within communities of practice.
I'm interested in working anywhere that the fields of networked new media and adult learning meet.
I believe that approaching this work with the hybrid nature of a new media artist/technologist and an adult educator can allow me to think about the pedagogy within the cultures (small and large) that I encounter and deliver integrated and fundamentally coherent programming.
Offsetting the technological with the ecological, I spend as much time as I can in the Canadian wilderness - from snowboarding and mountaineering to scuba diving and kayaking, this vast Canadian public trust is a central aspect of my life.

Philosophical Statement

I consider myself to be a critical adult education technologist.
I am an adult educator adhering as appropriately as possible in my professional practice to the tenets of critical pedagogy (Brookfield, 2005; Elias & Merriam, 1995; Freire, 2000; Pietrykowski, 1996). In my practice as an educator, my focus is on walking with the learner through the process of conscientization – through the transformative process of comprehending one’s place in the world in a deeper, more critically reflective way – and then working with the learner to build an authentic and personally meaningful approach to interrogating, engaging with and positively changing this newly understood context.
However, as a dedicated and experienced new media technologist, my practice also operates from within an identity adapted to be creative, critical and productive in the mediated culture of networked, web-based software systems design, systems development and new media art (Castells, Cardoso, & others, 2006; Manovich, 2001). From this hybrid perspective, technologist and educator, I attempt to find ways in which adult learners can construct a meaningful, clear and critical dialog with their learning and broader lived lives within this technologically mediated and networked world, exploring sites of constructive adaptation and creative expression.

References
Brookfield, S. (2005). The power of critical theory for adult learning and teaching. The Adult Learner, 85.
Castells, M., Cardoso, G., & others. (2006). The network society: From knowledge to policy. Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations Washington, DC.
Elias, J. L., & Merriam, S. B. (1995). Philosophical foundations of adult education. ERIC.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT press.
Pietrykowski, B. (1996). Knowledge and power in adult education: Beyond Freire and Habermas. Adult Education Quarterly, 46(2), 82–97.

My Portfolio.

You'll find a small, referential sample of my work below. Contact me if you'd like more details or would like to see more.

all
Code
Sound
Words

Testimonials.

My broader work in new media art and electronic music is central to my identity as a technologist.
Here are some kind things some others have on my creative work

Thomas Quinlan - Exclaim Magazine

It's a given that Sebutones, Buck 65 and Sixtoo sound best over their own production, but with Still Alive..., Halifax, NS, beatsmith Stigg of the Dump provides them with their best outside production yet ....

Keyo - Irish Hip Hop

Stigg's 'Still Alive...' provides an athmospheric and immersive listening experience. Highly recommended.

Chadwicked - Tiny Mix Tapes

... Instrumental hip-hop, drum & bass, and electronica fans alike will be sitting somberly in anticipation, waiting to see where these two producers will take them next.

Cornerstone - Urban Smarts

... the combined powers of Sixtoo and Stigg of the Dump (who make up Villain Accelerate) have resulted in an atmospheric instrumental Hip Hop album the likes of which are too rarely heard.