Digitalization is an ongoing process in our society and David Withe discuss usage of digital and social media from a generation perspective as well as from a Visitors and Residents perspective. In my case, I belong to the Visitors side, which means that I’m not use social media and don’t’ want to leave digital traces on the web. However, these two different perspectives are from my perspective not static, rather context dependent. I develop my knowledge on a daily basis in this area (digital tools and platforms, social media, etc.), but the problem is the fast advancement in several areas.
As a part of the Open Network Learning course I’m forced to blog. Is it dangerous to blog, NO. For me two important aspects for not using social media are privacy and data usage. Whom will earn money from my writing (data) and how will my text be used now and in the future. These two arguments are typical for a Visitor and this Youtube clip highlight the negative effect of social media that I agree with.
Are social media and digital tools important to master or be aware of? As I started this post, digitalization is an ongoing process and in order to be a part of the society everybody need to understand and adapt to the trends in this area. For example, when the pandemic started early 2020 this had consequences for everybody and in my case for the education. I was new at the university, responsible for designing a new course, no academic/teaching experience, and I had to convert the course to online. The ironic thing was that the course that I developed covered Industry 4.0, digital transformation, and digital technologies. The main problem was that I didn’t know what type of digital tools that could be used for online education. My toolbox with digital tools was almost empty when I started the course and I had to identify and try new (for me) digital tools during lectures.
In order to learn and find out more about digital tools for online education I applied for the Open Network Learning (ONL) course. The ONL is an online course divided in three levels, 1) ONL community (all participants), 2) Group level, and 3) Individual level. My group (Level 2) is a perfect composition of individuals supporting knowledge development through knowledge integration. One of my research areas is knowledge development or organizational learning during high uncertainty. My model for knowledge development (Capturing, Joint learning, Absorb learning) seems to be valid in this context as well. For the reader interested in this model can read this journal paper:
AHLSKOG, M., BRUCH, J. & JACKSON, M. 2017. Knowledge integration in manufacturing technology development. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 28, 1035-1054.
The start of the ONL course have been super confusing. Why? Important information is spread all over the webpage. Often questions or meeting invitations are addressed in posts at some digital whiteboard. To stay updated you need to read every post. This becomes very time consuming and in today’s digital society other problems are information overflow and communication channels. The number of information channels have increased the last years which implies that everybody need to filter all information more rapidly since our available time is limited.
Stay tuned!
/Alwood
