To Web 2.0 and Beyond

Replying to an email, while listening to one of your favourite Podcasts, in addition to checking twitter to see what's new, all while working on an assignment.  You are effectively multitasking, but... Did you reply to that email quickly? Are you understanding that podcast? Did you scroll through twitter to accomplish what you needed? And how is that assignment going?   The Multitasking Myth Along with the idea of the digital native, is the idea (or myth) that this new generation of digital natives is skilled in multitasking. Multitasking is the ability to process two or more tasks simultaneously.  I think multitasking is a skill people like to say they have, I always thought I was pretty good at multitasking. However, after some reflection on Kirschner and Bruyckere's "The myths of digital native and the multitasker," I am not sure I would describe myself as 'multitasker ' anymore.  Kirschner and Bruyckere argue that multitasking for a human is n...

  This week, I read the chapter, 'Networked Work' in  Raine and Wellman's (2012) Networked. If you didn't read this chapter or just did a quick skim, you are in the right place.  The chapter begins with a trip to the past, where workplaces were filled with workers (mainly men) sitting in their own offices, working 9-5 jobs, interacting face-to-face. Pens, papers and the occasional phone call were common and work itself never came home. Now, we flash forward to the workspace today, where networked work and organizations are commonplace.  Networked work in Networked Organizations Raine and Wellman (2012) identify 5 related trends:  With the rise in globalization of work, consumerism and travel, workers and companies are able to connect with more colleagues and customers  There has been a shift from atom work (work in material economy: mining, making, transporting) to bit work (selling, describing, analyzing through words and pictures). There has been a rise...

Blogging: the online equivalent to "Stand up, face the class and read your diary out loud please."  I used to think blogging was something similar to the concept above.  I always admired the courage it took to share and publish your own thoughts in a less formal setting for anyone to read. I never thought I had it in me, I never imagined I would be asked to blog, but here I am.  When it comes to blogging, I am pretty much a newbie. I have created websites for my post-graduate courses that included blog components, but these were structured and had specifications to content and format.  This is my first time creating a blog that is simply for the purpose of blogging.  Each time I write a blog post, I am fighting the urge to use formal language and cite sources and links with a 'References' section at the bottom (and for my first blog post, I did!).  For my first few posts, I was typing into a word document, then copying the text into my blog draft because I ...