Reflective Blog-Sociotechnical Change

Sociotechnical change and aggregated service sites. Sociotechnical change is a new term I have not yet heard describe the social and technical changes we have happening in the world around us.  One of the biggest pieces to this movement is surrounded by a name that most would consider synonymous with the internet-Google.   What Google offers people in a single location to find multiple social outlets.  By logging into one site, you have email, IM, virtual calls or phone calls, document access, shopping access, site and more consolidated into a single site you log into.  This is an incredible feat in today’s day and age, and as Google continues to diversify and expand their service offerings for a growing online community. What Google manages to do it is expand a network so that individuals are able to reach out to a potentially larger and more varied pool of culture and information (Varnelis, 2008 ).  Facebook is taking subtle queues from Google and partnering with games, photo-sharing, reminders, contact lists, apps and settings in many online devices like laptops, phones, and tablets.  Again, what this does is centralize your information and allow you the option to “share” what you would like through one interface.   What this is limited to is what Jenkins refers to as the Participation Gap-who are the ones that will be left behind in this online movement and social importance and pressure of being part of a participatory culture?  As technology continues to evolve, there may be a larger gap made more apparent in the socio-economic differences of students-those that have access to computers, social networks and technology accessible to experience with and those that do not. It has become more and more apparent that understanding technology and having the ability to participate in this online society is more important and almost required for a successful future as a contributing citizen.  What should concern us as educators is the challenge of filtering the information available at the click of a button and legitimatizing sources in a world where so many options are available to us, and where ads are targeted directly at online readers and users based on their likes, browsing history and previous purchases. 

What Counts as Literacy....

It was not until after I completed my paper did I realize that even the title of the article "Online R U Really Reading?" speaks to a new dialect of language that has evolved with the onset of the online world. The "texting" language that has evolved in the last few years has given different meaning and as well as created new words we now use in day to day language and communications.  We are constantly encouraged to work to engage and incorporate diverse learners and cultures into lesson planning and course content.  Being able to manage, utilize and engage in an electronic world is important in today's day and age-for learning as well as in business.

Literacy is not just understanding how to read, write and analyze, but also how to engage and think.  It should not matter what the context or environment is in which we engage students. As educators, we should be able to adapt to the environment in which material can and is presented.  In addition, as assessors and evaluators we should be able to recognize the opportunity that the online environment brings to literacy and continuing education.

I found it a bit ironic that this article debated the effectiveness of literacy in an online forum as presented to an online class.  Certainly there is value in engaging online, and allowing individuals to demonstrate skills like research and web navigation (both of which are vital business traits today) while conversing, analyzing, participating, reading, qualifying sources, and writing about them.  These are all activities that we do in traditional classrooms via traditional means-reading from a book, classroom discussions, and submission of papers/quizzes/tests to demonstrate knowledge. There is a tremendous value in not only understanding online literacy, but in applying what makes it so appealing to our learning and instructional styles and approaches.

Introduction

Hello everyone. First time blogging ever; looking forward to interacting with everyone