The VFOI projects seeks to build on and expand established theory and practice surrounding funds of identity (FOI). A fund of identity is a resource that can be a practice or knowledge learned at home or in everyday life that is used to navigate or understand one’s identity in a particular group. Such everyday knowledge, particularly when it is associated with a nondominant culture or social group, is often undervalued or seen as inferior to other kinds of knowledge in classroom settings, which can make learning much harder for students from those marginalized groups. VFOI makes use of a network visualization software, Net.Create, to elicit these funds and make their relations visible and accessible to students and teachers alike.
Net.Create allows for simultaneous creation and editing of network visualization graphs (example below). Originally developed for use in undergraduate history classrooms to help users explore a large corpus of data concurrently together, the current project works with middle school students to explore data literacy and their collective funds of identity, and how to design disciplinary learning experiences that draw on those FOI.
You can find more information on VFOI and Net.Create here: https://theraptlab.org/projects/netcreate