Datacloud

Here are some quotes from Johndan Johnson-Eilola's Datacloud that might guide us. In the first quote, his pointing out the tenuous relationship between online and IRL seems to parallel the paper and internet genre relationship; and why I like the use of environment.

- "Workers in such corporations, like the students in my classes, rely heavily on their abilities to communicate rapidly and in multiple media, to organize and circulate information, and to attack problems in creative, nontraditional ways. Increasingly, users in such spaces--both microcontexts and macrocontexts--—work and learn within visually and structurally dense, often frankly and intentionally chaotic spaces. They multitask, they surf, they filter and rearrange, and they push and pull data streams. The often-held separation between online and IRL ("IN Real Life"”) is fairly tenuous, with relationships developed online spilling over into the real world; information at the surface or at depth in the computer moves back and forth to PDA, web-enabled phone, video monitor, stereo, and more" (32).
- “"Unfortunately, current approaches to computers in education tend to prioritize more traditional types of work: writing essays and reports in word processors, analyzing profit and loss flows in spreadsheets, and calculating forces in numerical analysis programs. These are all useful skills, but they are the legacy of an earlier form of work; one that is being replaced by more complex forms. Because we have failed to understand the characteristics of symbolic-analytic work, we have yet to do an effective job of helping people learn to become symbolic-analytic workers"” (72).

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