This is the fourth and final part of the Introduction for the forthcoming book 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', which will be published later this year. It is an edited volume with contributions from a number of leading practitioners and thinkers in the field. The Foreword is by Howard Rheingold.In the final section of this volume, Part 4, we present four case studies drawn from contrasting training and learning cultures, examining the cultures of corporate e-learning, cybercriminality, language evolution and social networking.
David Guralnick and Deb Larson represent the corporate training sector view in chapter 14. They write from the perspective of the company employee and explore the cultural basis of corporate e-learning. Guralnick and Larson describe the current state of employee cyberculture and propose that companies would be far better off using a strategic design approach to e-learning and corporate intranets, one based on helping employees and engaging them in their work. By doing so, companies will be able to integrate technology into employees' work lives in a way that improves their performance and boosts their morale and commitment.
Steven Furnell’s chapter ‘Cybercrime in Society’ presents a disturbing account of the current risks and threats to e-learners, and society in general from a number of criminal activities, including malware (viruses), hacking, and identity theft. There is a suggestion throughout that a criminal culture exists alongside other cultures within online life, waiting for the opportunity to transgress by exploiting network weaknesses. Through this chapter, Furnell provides a timely wake-up call for any user of the Internet who believes themselves to be safe, and suggests ways in which we can all protect ourselves from the more unsavoury elements of the online culture.
The penultimate chapter by Tim Shortis offers an explanatory framework for the re-spellings associated with new technology text formats such as email, internet chat, SMS text messaging and instant messaging. He considers some of the features and patterns of British adolescents’ uses of such writing and technology enabled semiotics. Shortis argues that technology has encouraged an extended set of orthographies which users draw upon to inflect their purposes and project their identities. He holds that such re-spelling is not a new phenomenon. Shortis goes on to consider the contextual pressures which act on users’ choices and argues that technology has re-regulated what counts as spelling, which challenges the official educational discourses of literacy, particularly where they apply to orthography.
The final chapter in this volume is entitled ‘Imagined Worlds, Emerging Cultures’. It was written as a collaborative project between Steve Wheeler and Helen Keegan who used Google docs to write together across the distance. In this chapter they present perspectives on cyber cultures as ‘imagined worlds’ in education and focus on how emerging online social spaces impact upon individual perceptions and practices. Wheeler and Keegan pay particular attention to the social networking and multi-user virtual environment cultures, where imagination is unleashed, but where friendship can be superficial. They focus upon old and new media cultures and the shift in perception over issues such as ownership, intellectual property, copyright, personal identity and privacy. The chapter examines cultural values such as privacy, identity and ownership and highlight two 'digital clan' cultures – FaceBookers and Flickrites. They analyse some similarities and differences in an attempt to explore how tribal cultures develop around and through imagined worlds.
Such a spectrum of perspectives on cyberculture must hold something for everyone. It is our hope that readers will find the ideas contained within the book challenging and inspiring. Ultimately, we hope that teachers and lecturers and indeed all those involved in education will be able to take at least some of these ideas and apply them to their own professional practice. The result, we trust, will be a better understanding of the practices and processes that are inherent in online life, and that this better understanding will ultimately encourage better teaching and learning.
David Guralnick and Deb Larson represent the corporate training sector view in chapter 14. They write from the perspective of the company employee and explore the cultural basis of corporate e-learning. Guralnick and Larson describe the current state of employee cyberculture and propose that companies would be far better off using a strategic design approach to e-learning and corporate intranets, one based on helping employees and engaging them in their work. By doing so, companies will be able to integrate technology into employees' work lives in a way that improves their performance and boosts their morale and commitment.
Steven Furnell’s chapter ‘Cybercrime in Society’ presents a disturbing account of the current risks and threats to e-learners, and society in general from a number of criminal activities, including malware (viruses), hacking, and identity theft. There is a suggestion throughout that a criminal culture exists alongside other cultures within online life, waiting for the opportunity to transgress by exploiting network weaknesses. Through this chapter, Furnell provides a timely wake-up call for any user of the Internet who believes themselves to be safe, and suggests ways in which we can all protect ourselves from the more unsavoury elements of the online culture.
The penultimate chapter by Tim Shortis offers an explanatory framework for the re-spellings associated with new technology text formats such as email, internet chat, SMS text messaging and instant messaging. He considers some of the features and patterns of British adolescents’ uses of such writing and technology enabled semiotics. Shortis argues that technology has encouraged an extended set of orthographies which users draw upon to inflect their purposes and project their identities. He holds that such re-spelling is not a new phenomenon. Shortis goes on to consider the contextual pressures which act on users’ choices and argues that technology has re-regulated what counts as spelling, which challenges the official educational discourses of literacy, particularly where they apply to orthography.
The final chapter in this volume is entitled ‘Imagined Worlds, Emerging Cultures’. It was written as a collaborative project between Steve Wheeler and Helen Keegan who used Google docs to write together across the distance. In this chapter they present perspectives on cyber cultures as ‘imagined worlds’ in education and focus on how emerging online social spaces impact upon individual perceptions and practices. Wheeler and Keegan pay particular attention to the social networking and multi-user virtual environment cultures, where imagination is unleashed, but where friendship can be superficial. They focus upon old and new media cultures and the shift in perception over issues such as ownership, intellectual property, copyright, personal identity and privacy. The chapter examines cultural values such as privacy, identity and ownership and highlight two 'digital clan' cultures – FaceBookers and Flickrites. They analyse some similarities and differences in an attempt to explore how tribal cultures develop around and through imagined worlds.
Such a spectrum of perspectives on cyberculture must hold something for everyone. It is our hope that readers will find the ideas contained within the book challenging and inspiring. Ultimately, we hope that teachers and lecturers and indeed all those involved in education will be able to take at least some of these ideas and apply them to their own professional practice. The result, we trust, will be a better understanding of the practices and processes that are inherent in online life, and that this better understanding will ultimately encourage better teaching and learning.
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