Charting a Course for Fun!

To the right is a link to a model of a Socio-Technical Network. Each participant in the network (Designer, Content Provider, User, and Manager) and his or her related ICT is in a corner. The arrows represent the flow of information between participants. This model was created in Macromedia Fireworks (Macromedia was bought out by Adobe), a vector graphics editing program. The image itself is a PNG because PNG is the W3C's standard image format, because PNG is an open source format, and because the PNG format has lossless compression, which means that the image is compressed but doesn't lose any data (unlike a JPEG image, which loses quality as it is compressed).

Way back in 1995, a plan was presented to the Texas state legislature to do away with textbooks and instead rent laptops to students. This seems like a good idea at first; laptops cost $10 per month while textbooks cost $37.50 per month. However, this ignores several hidden costs. What happens if a student drops his laptop? The school must rent a new one. Now the school is paying for two laptops. A dropped or defaced textbook can still be used the next year. Plus, the school will need to update the laptops often to protect against viruses and spyware, as well as provide technical support. This requires hiring IT professionals. Surely that will cost more than $37.50 a month.

Also, one must look at the plan from a Social Informatics standpoint. What will the social impact of the laptops be? How will they improve the education of K-12 schools? Many, if not most, families have computers in their homes. What will the addition of a laptop provide? Research and essays can be done on the family computer or in the computer lab. Reading textbooks on the computer is not very convenient. For what would the laptops actually be needed?

Social Informatics questions are very useful and very necessary when making decisions about ICTs. After asking these questions, the Texas legislature turned down the plan that had once seemed like a good idea.

Works Cited

Kling, Rob, Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. New Jersey: Information Today, Inc., 2005.