Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day (1999), two information technology researchers and scholars, developed the concept of the information ecology to describe the technology-rich systems that were emerging at the turn of the century. (1999) used the term information ecology to capture the complex and evolving nature of these systems. Nardi and O’Day observed, “Information ecologies Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
Humans as Technology-Using Creatures
Appropriate Proper Reasonable | RSS.com Technology is a relatively new word to the lexicon. The term was first used in print in 1831 by Jacob Bigelow, a New England botanist and doctor who published a series of his lectures as a textbook. Evidence of technology use by humans, however, extends far into pre-history. Wherever archaeologists Read More
Solving Wicked Problems
58: Solving Wicked Problems | RSS.com This is a continuation of two posts: Wicked Problems and Transparent Taming of Wicked Problems In reviewing practices that appeared to be most effective in designing solutions to wicked problems, Rittel and Webber (1973) recognized that different people perceive the problem (and its solution) differently, that experts sometimes have Read More
Leaving to Learn: A Lesson on Meaningful Education
When schools are providing the type of experiences students really need, teachers are likely to feel unprepared to answer students’ questions. This is what I felt when Andrew told me he wanted to do an internship at his family’s towing and automotive repair business and start a used parts business for his project. There are Read More
Use-Inspired Research
53: Use-Inspired Research in Educational Technology This is an excerpt from Efficacious Technology Management: a Guide for School Leaders In 1997, Donald Stokes suggested designing a project to be one type of research does not prevent one from doing the other type, so the dichotomy of pure and applied research is misleading. According to Stokes, Read More
Technology Stewardship
59: Technology Stewards “Communities of practice” (CoP) is a concept developed by Etienne Wenger and Nancy White and their collaborators; the idea has influenced organizational researchers and planners for more than a decade (Wenger 1999). Each CoP is defined by a group of practitioners who share a common field of endeavor and who also share Read More
iGen: Read This Book!
A different review is available here: http://hackscience.net/blog/?p=269 Twenge, J. M. (2017). iGEN: why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy– and completely unprepared for adulthood and (what this means for the rest of us). New York: Atria Books. For several years, educators have been hearing about (and teaching) Millennials. This term Read More
OER versus Publishing
Recently, a colleague asked me, “What is the difference between open educational resources and the materials I get from a publisher?” While the most obvious answer for educators is “cost,” it seems there is something far more important for educators, and that is the right to revise and redistribute works that are licensed under Creative Read More
The Organization of Training, Learning, Design
This is a continuation of the Training, Learning, Design post. This theme continues as well in the post Design Defined. We know educators need three types of support when they are creating technology-rich teaching and learning. Previously, I introduced training, learning and design as the types and each is labeled based on the focus of Read More
The Capacity to Learn
This post concludes the theme begun in The (Overturned) Model of Standard Education and continued in Alternatives to the Standard Model of Education A dominant theme in the literature on the future of work is that workers—all workers, white collar, blue collar, in the services, information field, and trades, and yet to be discovered fields—will have Read More