The Socio-Technological Perspective

 

Socio-Technical perspective is the study of how people socially interact with technological systems. It focuses on the relationship between humans and technology and emphasizes what both sides need in order to have a positive interaction with each other (IGI Global, n.d.). This is an important study because as technology advances, and with a large portion of the world currently experiencing economical strife, it’s easy for the technological world to advance at a much faster pace than our schools and our children.

A study from Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, 2013, takes a close look at how school age students in Brazil were affected when they each were given their own laptop to use throughout the school year. The children were from a low income neighborhood and at the time it would not have been financially possible for each student to own their own laptop. The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization donated the laptops to the school, and the study was conducted. It focused on formal (institutional), informal (remote), and non-formal (remote, structured) learning methods with these school children and their new laptops (Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, 2013).

This study ran into number issues during the experiment that were not originally foreseen. First, the researchers noticed that they had introduced a newer technology into a community that wasn’t necessarily ready to accept the technology (Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, 2013). They also had to come up with ways to keep the laptops from getting stolen by criminals, family members, and even from the school. There were also unforeseen issues like requiring more technical support and instruction than originally planned for both the students and their parents so that they both could effectively use the laptops (Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, 2013).

The study proved that students now had rapid access to resources via the internet that they wouldn’t have been able to access without making a trip to the library. It showed that the students not only exhibited success with homework while using their laptops at home but also in the classroom, as they were able to make real-time internet queries for resources and even complete homework while still in the classroom, under the teachers’ tutelage. Lastly, the research found that by the introduction of this new technology, tasks and assignments that once seemed boring and dull, now came with a level of excitement and fun when executed by the students (Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, 2013).

 

References

Hayashi, E., & Baranauskas, M. (2013). Affectibility in Educational Technologies: A Socio-Technical Perspective for Design. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 57-58. : https://coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/affectibility-educational-technologies-socio/docview/1287029534/se-2

What is socio-technical perspective. IGI Global. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/towards-an-interdisciplinary-socio-technical-definition-of-virtual-communities/60271.