The situation regarding IT management in many schools is well-captured by the hypothetical (and sarcastic) Putt’s Law. According to Archibald Putt, “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand” (Putt, 2006, p. 7). Further, Putt articulated a corollary, Read More
Category: Technology
What Michael Crichton Wrote about Computers
Michael Crichton (who would later author Jurassic Park among other well-known novels) wrote Electronic Life in 1983; the book was his response to friends and acquaintances who were constantly seeking his advice on buying, setting up, and using their first computers and that would become embedded in the culture as computers gained acceptance and penetrated Read More
Areopagitica
In 1644, John Milton composed a pamphlet in which he argues for freedom of expression; areopagitica has been adopted as a term to describe the capacity for individual to compose and distribute any ideas they see fit. Digital tools, especially those called Web 2.0 tools have been interpreted as the realization of areopagetica and students Read More
Reflexivity in Technology-Rich Teaching and Learning
Appropriate Proper Reasonable Reflexivity was originally used to describe the effects of social science researchers on the situations they were studying; the presence of researchers affects the behavior of subjects, thus the observations made. More recently, the term has been used to describe the influence of ICT on how people use information and how they Read More
“Activation Energy” and Instructional Technology
Appropriate Proper Reasonable Computers and information technologies have an interesting characteristic: We can use it to be more efficient in our work, but getting to that point requires a temporary decrease in efficiency. We can illustrate this with this picture: When we are using a “primitive” technology, we must exert a certain (and familiar) level Read More
More Thoughts on iGen
For several years, educators and other who care about your people have been hearing about “the Millennials,” which is the name given to the young people who were in school around the turn of the century. My children (who were born in 1990 and 1994) are firmly in the Millennial generation. Jean Twenge, a psychologist Read More
Information Ecologies
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
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
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
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