I'm currently reading "This book is overdue." It's an unusual book with chapters that tell stories about librarians and libraries. One chapter focuses on librarians teaching international students everything they need to know to be long-distance students, keeping them connected, and establishing an online community for them. They are part of a mostly long-distance Master's program in Global Development & Social Justice - designed to give people around the world useful tools for promoting social justice. This program enables students to remain in their communities while learning how to investigate, document, and fight injustice using the Internet. These activists learn how to become wired to each other and to the world's information resources.
The program has noble goals and takes advantage of modern technology to reach these goals, yet a speaker at the graduation ceremony just didn't get it. He said, "Our obsession with and dependence on technology is frightening." These students learned how to use technology to do good works, to communicate across the world, yet those who don't have hands-on knowledge think of these technologies as time consuming and unnecessary.
How do we communicate the value of social networking tools, cloud computing, and collaborative tools? Use them yourself and share what you know. Show others how easy it is, that it's more about communication than technology. Tell success stories of how these tools have been beneficial. Encourage people to play and explore.
Here is an NPR article about "This book is overdue" - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124316231
1 comment:
I often look at my grandparents generation and wonder if the cultural whiplash of technology is or has gone too far.
Then again, I like to remember Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner wrote in his book that the information overload of data from new technology is becoming "confusing and harmful" to the mind. It brings perspective when you think he wrote about it in the 1500s.
When you think about it, the car first was created by hobbyists at the turn of the century. The first time a common control layout that you and I are familiar with came on a Caddilac in 1918 or so. And it really wasn't until the 1920's that cars became common and useful. By the 1940's indispensable.
I think there is a rough starting point in technology. And there is a path from that to where it is smooth and broadly accepted. Knowing that it makes it easier to both encourage and educate in the face of ignorance and misunderstanding.
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