February 9
Week 3: Using Technology for Good ... or not?

It has been said that "every technology has dual impulses toward liberation and domination..."

Today's session will allow us to explore aspects of these objectives:

• Describe several specific technologies that are or might be applied to human learning.
• Explain how social institutions affect and are in turn affected by such technologies.
• Describe the moral, ethical, legal and societal implications of specific learning technologies.
• Use software tools and online resources to practice creative problem-solving and communicate your solutions and reflections.
• Use a variety of problem-solving techniques to address ill-defined problems within the domains of this course and beyond.

Technology as a Persuasive Tool

This week Dr. Allison Rossett will discuss some of the positive possibilities emerging through the new discipline known as captology.

Exploring JSB's Big Dilemmas of Technology

Then we'll explore the readings from the week.

In the preface to The Social Life of Information, JSB proposes several problems and dilemmas related to the advancement of information technology and society. They include:

• rapid growth in knowledge bases overwhelming the value they provide (p. xiii)
• commodity fetishism - a focus on information to the detriment of human relations (p. xvi)
• the tension between centrifugal technologies separating people into electronic cottages (xiv-xv) and centripetal social needs (xix) keeping people together
  • for work (xviii)
  • or for school (xxiii)
• paper vs. electronic documents and books (xix-xx)

In a group of 2-3 people, choose one of the problems from above and begin to work on it using the Problem Restatement method (Jones ch. 3, especially pp 65-66) or the Pros-Cons-and-Fixes method (Jones ch. 4, especially p. 78). You may use Inspiration if you like, or just type directly into Moodle (topic #4). If you use Pros-Cons-and-Fixes, go only through step 4 of the process.

Then your group will take what another group started and continue the creative problem-solving process. If the first group used problem restatement, you will use the divergent/convergent thinking process to generate solutions (Jones ch. 5, especially p. 86). If the first group used pros-cons-fixes, you will continue that process at step 4 (the first group already worked on step 4 but you may revisit it with your group before moving on to steps 5 and 6 (Jones p. 78). Again, you may use Inspiration or type directly into Moodle, this time in reply to the first group's work. Keep in mind some of the ideas from captology as you generate solutions.

Before Next Week's Class

• Read Jones Chapters 6-10
• Read JSB Ch 1-2
• Explore this site on plagiarism
• Do a blog entry using problem restatement, pros-cons-fixes, divergent/convergent thinking, or some combination to address a problem in your own life or a problem in the world you are concerned with. Comment on how the method allowed you to move beyond the limits of your biases/assumptions/patterns/emotions/etc.