In his book Datacloud, Johndan Johnson-Eilola points out that today’s workplace involves jobs requiring symbolic-analytic work. This type of activity consists of gathering information, circulating it, reorganizing it, seeing patterns in it, and gleaning concepts from it. He argues for computer interfaces that support such activity and computer education that fosters it. Both areas currently fall short, he writes.
His point is well taken. The process involved in immersing oneself in large amounts of disparate information and creating sense of it always involves a kind of messiness that Microsoft Word does not allow. For example, several weeks ago I was required to create a Learning Record for a graduate class I am taking. The record was to include samples of my work which reflected five interdependent dimensions of learning (confidence, skills and strategies, prior knowledge and emerging experience, content mastery, and reflection) as they related to course objectives such as technology, reading, and writing. The task required assembling large amounts of data and looking at it from multiple perspectives simultaneously.
As Johnson-Eilola notes, computer applications are linear and do not support this kind of activity easily. My work involved having easy access to the following: 1. various Word files where I had documents relating to a computer usability project and a series of ongoing observations about learning. 2. screen shots of e-mail communications and posts from an on-line collaboration site. 3. posts from an on-line Weblog. 4. hard copies of text and articles I had been reading. 5. written notes and drafts. 6. handouts from the instructor.
As happens in Johnson-Eilola’s examples, my work spilled over into multiple windows and extended far beyond the computer monitor. As I worked, I used the floor space to manipulate the documents around as I tried to uncover not merely categories, but themes. I pushed and pulled the information into all sorts of configurations, writing on it, sorting and resorting it until I had produced, quite messily, the final Learning Record.
Johnson-Eilola is correct that this kind of activity is not easily engaged in without support for retrieving, viewing, and manipulating various kinds of data. I look forward to using such interfaces as they emerge.
