Research Abstract Accepted for PRISM 2026

 Jaipur based educator and researcher, who won  Commonwealth Award 2025 – CASTME  STEM Literacy Award –  as team project lead with Pardeep arora and Prabha Awasthi – contributed an abstract to the conference “PRISM 2026 – AnthroTechne: Technopoiesis, Mediation, and Meaning.”

The reviewers informed, “ We are pleased to inform you that your submission has been vetted and is accepted for presentation during the PRISM 2026 conference (23–25 February 2026).

The observations of the reviewers are as follows:

• This abstract aligns strongly with the conference’s focus on the Anthropology of Technology, effectively connecting pedagogy, culture, and digital mediation through theoretical and ethnographic depth.
• The integration of multimodality, techno-ethics, and curricular development offers a nuanced, interdisciplinary approach that aligns with PRISM 2026’s aims.
• The abstract could be refined by specifying the scope of digital platforms analyzed and clarifying how the findings contribute conceptually to the anthropology of technology, beyond cultural documentation.
• It is a rigorous and thematically relevant proposal; however, minor tightening and introduction of a few more critical frameworks for methodological clarity will make it highly suitable for acceptance.

The abstract of the paper is is as follows

Ethics in Age of Technology: Insights from New Age Prayers
 as Micro-Credential Course for Students of Grade Eight 

Dr Lalit Kishore
Adviser, STEM-Education (CASTME)
Bhavi Nirman Society NGO
Chaksu, Jaipur, India
lalit_culp@rediffmail.com
 
Abstract

With the adoption of credits-based interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary courses and assessments, there is an opportunity to develop innovative in-house micro-credential courses at the elementary level and macro-credential courses at the secondary and higher education levels. At the middle school level, 12-15 hour micro-credential courses have been permitted as school-based innovations. In light of this, an initiative was undertaken to design a micro-credential course on techno-ethics for eighth-grade students. The research on objectives-outcomes driven curriculum development had three main objectives: (1) To create four new age prayers of 5-6 lines that emphasize techno-ethics; (2) To establish  a process for the transaction and memorization of the prayers; and (3) To compose a four-page research report on new age prayers as an experiential learning activity. Four hours have been allocated for mastering the content of the prayers and their recitation, while eight hours are designated for report writing for credits-based assessment. As this curriculum development research is set to be implemented in the upcoming academic session, the three outcomes of the objectives-driven study are in the form of a mini-book on techno-ethics prayers and a process for classroom engagement with the prayers, focusing on listening, speaking, reading, vocabulary building and memorization skills. The course developer, as a human agent, gained profound insights into techno-ethics and assisted students in using cyberspace ethically and safely.

Keywords: Communication skills, credits-based assessment, curriculum development, human agency, new age prayers, Techno-ethics