Computer Technologists Research Articles

From exclusion to self-inclusion of women in ICT. Motivations, enablers and mechanisms of self-inclusion

Research on the participation of women in ICT shows that the gender digital divide persists. Given that, most studies continue to focus on explaining the mechanisms of exclusion of women from ICT. In this article I propose a paradigm shift from exclusion to inclusion. I go beyond inclusion by conceptualizing and analysing the process of self-inclusion of women in ICT from a purposive sample of women artistic and computer technologists. The results are based on the qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups, in which I aim to answer three main questions: What motivated their self-inclusion? What enablers did they encounter? What mechanisms did they follow and activate to self-include in ICT? The main results show, first, that the motivations for pleasure are predominant, but often complemented by other utilitarian motivations. Second, a set of enablers facilitate women’s self-inclusion in ICT, including gender policies. Finally, I discuss a number of mechanisms of self-inclusion that go beyond learning that include doing and undoing gender.

Issues And Challenges Of Instructional Technology Specialists In Alberta Colleges

Under pressure to become more cost effective and competitive in the delivery of educational courses and programs, Alberta colleges have identified the integration of communication and information technologies as an appropriate response to these fiscal demands. This requires highly skilled computer and communication technologists who are both technology specialists and pedagogical experts. Twenty-eight Instructional Technology Specialists at fourteen Alberta colleges responded to a written survey. Follow-up interviews were held with seven respondents. Respondents perceived the college’s administration as lacking understanding of the implications of integrating technology into teaching and uncertain about ongoing funding for projects. As Instructional Technology Specialists they brought a variety of backgrounds and experiences to their work. They provided a broad range of services and maintained currency through ongoing formal and informal professional development. For these IT Specialists, their concerns are about growth and a better balance between the technical and pedagogical aspects of technology.

Giving Pause to Giftedness: Where Do We Go From Here?

At the dawn of a new millennium, experts and novices in the field of giftedness may be summoned to use this time to review, scrutinize, and ponder various aspects of the field and their roles in advancing it. Giving pause to giftedness allows us to unearth some interesting perspectives and salient insights for the future. The most distinct observation emerging from this reflective process is that the field of giftedness has yet to balance its function as a unique entity and its role as an interrelated component of existing fields. Metaphorically, the field of giftedness is operating like a young child who engages mostly in parallel play alongside other children. As a relatively new domain of study, much of its activities have focused on exploring basic concepts and establishing fundamental features within its parameters. Just like for young children, progression to the next phase of development occurs when we become more knowledgeable and comfortable with ourselves in our environment, actively exploring the world and others around us. Although the field's reserved behavior may well have been justified up to this point, in order to establish its identity and a secure a meaningful place in the 21st century, it must engage more interactively with other fields. In considering the next stages of development of the field of giftedn ess, there are a few considerations worth mentioning. The first three points primarily involve collaboration among members, and the latter three points focus on collaboration with members from other fields. First, it is important that a strong collaborative relationship exist between experts and novices. On the surface, this mentorship role involves experts providing a strong knowledge base, nurturing and guiding novice members. A deeper interrelationship would ensure greater preparedness to take on challenges like modifying the regular curriculum to address the advanced learning needs of gifted students. Through their expertise and research, teachers would feel supported in their advocacy efforts. In the future, experts might establish and maintain interactive web sites that provide immediate communication and resource support for teachers. Imagine, for example, a Renzulli chatroom online. Second, various aspects of the field are more developed than others, and it is important to decide when to focus efforts close to home and when to venture forth to access related information. For example, Callahan (1993) and Carter (1991) immersed themselves program evaluation when evaluation activities within our field proved to be problematic. Their efforts highlighted for us the critical aspects of the evaluation process. This encouraged program developers and educators of the gifted to make their programs more effective, thereby securing necessary administrative, political, and financial support. Future collaborations involving core areas from other fields and related areas of giftedness remain important in facilitating and sustaining the field of giftedness. Consider the possibilities resulting from interactions with computer technologists in developing virtual school programs for gifted students. Third, a critical area for development within the field of giftedness is in defining itself. This is a core question. Our struggle to establish an identity is analogous to what Erikson referred to as adolescents' role confusion verses identity formation. We have become distracted by loose and varied definitions. Attempts have been made to bring the various definitions of giftedness together in seminal texts (Colangelo & Davis, 1997; Sternberg & Davidson, 1986) and engage in scholarly dialogue with colleagues to scrutinize specific perspectives such as Gagne's (Coleman, 1999). The future of the field of giftedness must continue and even accelerate the coalescence of definitions and models of giftedness. Maybe it is time to call for a summit gathering, a research survey, a vote, or bring in a mediator to facilitate this process. …

Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology

From the Publisher: When something works well, you can feel it; there is sense of rightness to it. We call that rightness beauty, and it ought to be the single most important component of design. This recognition is at the heart of David Gelernter's wittily argued essay, Machine Beauty, which defines beauty as an inspired mating of simplicity and power. You can see it in Bauhaus chair, the Hoover Dam, or an Emerson radio circa 1930. In contrast, too many contemporary technologists run out of ideas and resort to gimmicks and features; they are rarely capable of real, structural ingenuity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of computers. You don't have to look far to see how oblivious most computer technologists are to the idea of beauty. Just look at how ugly your computer cabinet is, how unwieldy and out of sync if feels with the manner and speed with which you process thought. The best designers, however, are obsessed with beauty. Both hardware and software should afford us the greatest opportunity to achieve deep beauty, the kind of beauty that happens when many types of loveliness reinforce one another, when design expresses an underlying technology, machine logic. Program software ought to be transparent: it should engage what Gelernter calls a thought-amplifying feedback loop, creative symbiosis with its user. These principles, beautiful in themselves, will set the stage for the next technological revolution, in which the pursuit of elegance will lead to extraordinary innovations.

Where is computing headed?

Technological change is putting entire industries on the betting line. For computer technologists, these shifts can mean opportunity or disappointment as one technology is replaced by another. Therefore, it is important that we consider economic and technical forces when we plan for the future. By studying predictable technology and asking what if questions where developments are less certain, we can envision the state of computing in another 10 years. >

The use of oral communication approaches to enhance the instruction environment for MIS classes

Computer technologists are often considered to be poor communicators. In all too many instances, the communication problems are escalated by the fact that computer professionals must often interact with end-users who have limited knowledge of computer jargon (Hughes C.T., J. Systems Mgmt 37, 15 (1986); Ref. [1]). What seems to be lacking is the ability to narrate technological notions in a concise, businesslike fashion, as some have suggested (Benjamin R.I., Dickinson Jr C. and Rochhart J.F., MIS Q. 177 (September 1985); Ref. [2] and Rockhart J.F. amd Flannery, Commun. ACM 776 (October 1983); Ref. [3]). In order to adequately respond to the challenge of being able to communicate effectively, a binding together of the technology and ability to express oneself must take place. Professors could help business students avoid this potential problem by integrating oral communication skills into a MIS course. Studies consistently document that oral communication skills are important for career success (Behnke R.R., Sawyer C.R. and King P.E., Commun. Educ. 36, 140 (April 1987); Ref. [4]). This paper describes cooperative efforts between instructors and students to enhance the communication skills of information systems majors.

Sociological literature in an age of computerized texts

Although scholars have quickly adopted computers for word processing, new forms of interactive electronic texts pose important questions for the nature of scholarly literature in the social sciences. The social relationships constructed by interactive electronic texts devalue the authority of the writer and empower the reader. This is due in part to the phenomenology of electronic texts; in part to the social contexts governing the use of textual artifacts; and in part to the origin of electronic texts in the reading culture of computer technologists. Although narrative reading cultures empower the writer (as “author”) over readers, technical reading strategies construct the text as information which is given form by the reader. New information technologies thus challenge the scholarly concept of authorship, the status of scholarly writing as a “literature,” and the notion of copyright of texts.

LAND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: A REVIEW OF SELECTED CONCEPTS AND ISSUES

AbstractThe need for thoughtful and careful stewardship of the land, together with the more intensive use and management of the resources upon it, is gradually emerging as a major concern. This in turn is leading to a re-examination of the strategies and programmes for providing information about the land. Increasingly the question is being asked, and at very senior levels in both government and industry, whether the information will be available in time and in the form that will be required by policy makers, resource planners, administrators and individual citizens. The quest for answers to this question is falling in large measure to a complex, diverse group of actors and institutions making up what may be described as the land-information management community. It is a community which includes not only surveyors, cartographers, geographers, foresters, appraisers and others who have traditionally played a strong role in the land information field, but also systems engineers, computer technologists, recor...

LAND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: A REVIEW OF SELECTED CONCEPTS AND ISSUES

The need for thoughtful and careful stewardship of the land, together with the more intensive use and management of the resources upon it, is gradually emerging as a major concern. This in turn is leading to a re-examination of the strategies and programmes for providing information about the land. Increasingly the question is being asked, and at very senior levels in both government and industry, whether the information will be available in time and in the form that will be required by policy makers, resource planners, administrators and individual citizens. The quest for answers to this question is falling in large measure to a complex, diverse group of actors and institutions making up what may be described as the land-information management community. It is a community which includes not only surveyors, cartographers, geographers, foresters, appraisers and others who have traditionally played a strong role in the land information field, but also systems engineers, computer technologists, records managers, land-use planners, lawyers and resource specialists. It is a community which is increasingly interested not only in the technology for gathering and processing information, and not only in the design and development of land information systems/networks, but also in the policies and strategies for effectively using this information.

Artificial Intelligence-The Emerging Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI), once considered as an obscure branch of computer science, is now having a growing number of adherents in a wide variety of fields. AI is particularly useful for combat automation in defence. The combined works of computer scientists and technologists and cognitive scientists have brought out for intelligent information processing knowledge is the key factor. In the last few years, AI has been tried out with a high degree of success in certain areas such as the Expert Systems and the Computer Vision Systems. Both these have great potential in target classification and identification, information fusion, multiradar Air Defence Network, C2 (Command andControl) operations etc. in defence.

The computer imperative

“The Computer Imperative” has been defined as the necessity for the administrator to specify his goals, objectives, criteria, standards, rules, etc., in very explicit and operational terms as he seeks to devise a better management system, especially if computers will be used to implement portions of the system. It is essential that educational leaders be able to tell system designers and computer technologists what they want, and to do this they must know at least the rudiments of what is technically possible. Otherwise, the administrator in some sense is at the mercy of the technologist. Studying an administrative system as essentially an information system provides a useful model. To define who originates, processes, uses, or needs information is to describe much of the actual operation of administration. In a manual system, many rules and procedures can be left undefined, and intuition and experience can substitute effectively for logical precision. As computers are programed to assume certain basic transactional functions, the administrator must bear in mind that computers do only what they are told. It is therefore critically important to be able to describe what we want. Much of the “threat” of automation can be attributed to uneasy or uncomfortable recognition of this “imperative”.

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGISTS.

Journal of Management StudiesVolume 3, Issue 3 p. 244-255 COMPUTER TECHNOLOGISTS Dilemmas of a New Role Enid Mumford, Enid Mumford Formerly Research Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Now at the Manchester Business School.Search for more papers by this authorTom Ward, Tom Ward Head of Management Research, Littlewoods Mail Order Stores.Search for more papers by this author Enid Mumford, Enid Mumford Formerly Research Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Now at the Manchester Business School.Search for more papers by this authorTom Ward, Tom Ward Head of Management Research, Littlewoods Mail Order Stores.Search for more papers by this author First published: October 1966 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1966.tb00861.xCitations: 9Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume3, Issue3October 1966Pages 244-255 RelatedInformation