How Everyday Technologies Transform Expertise in Specific Periods of the Lifecourse
This year’s essay questions will be posted on the module’s Canvas site (see below). In addition to your written response to the essay question, we would also like you to consider how you can incorporate multimedia content (images, music, videos etc.) into your essay in a way that creatively engages with, and adds a further layer of analysis to, your topic. The presentation of the multimedia content can either be achieved by embedding it into the essay or using hyperlinks. The multimedia content can either be created by yourself or can be secondary source material (e.g. found online), as long as it is attributed to its original creator in your bibliography. Most importantly, the content should carefully integrated into your response to the essay question.
Essay Question for 2021/22
How have everyday technologies transformed expertise in specific periods of the lifecourse? Your essay should focus on an example of expertise from one period of the lifecourse, and should critically reflect on historical and generational changes within this period of the lifecourse.
Learning outcomes
1. Demonstrate understanding of key theoretical concepts useful for making sense of how digital technologies penetrate and contribute to the remaking of everyday practices.
Recognise and illustrate the uneven ways in which change and continuity are lived between generations at any one historical moment, showing the interaction between technological change, expertise and everyday cultures.
3. Apply these ideas to key moments in the life course and to areas of human activity and sociotechnical support.
4. Demonstrate confidence and competence in working with a range of digital methods and media.
When writing your coursework, please pay attention to the maximum word limits that have been set for the assignment, as shown in your assessment deadlines timetable in Sussex Direct. This is particularly important for relatively short pieces of work where one of the skills is to write clearly but briefly.
If you use more words than the word limit and the marker feels that you have gained a clear and unfair advantage, you will lose marks for your work. This means that your work should not be longer than the word limit if you want to avoid a penalty.
The limits as stated include quotations in the text, but do not include the bibliography, footnotes/endnotes, appendices, abstracts, maps, illustrations, transcriptions of linguistic data, or tabulations of numerical or linguistic data and their captions.
Please choose one example from the content of the lecture slides I posted in the files, and feel free to take a look at the example essay (also in the files) for a brief idea. Please contact me as soon as possible if there are any further questions! Thank you!
EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGIES TRANSFORMED EXPERTISE IN SPECIFIC PERIODS OF THE LIFE COURSE?
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Everyday Technologies Transformed Expertise in Specific Periods of the Life Course?
Since the emergence of smartphones and digitally-enabled devices in the twentieth century, the definition of technology has gradually changed and permeated various aspects of our daily lives. Everywhere we go nowadays, technology surrounds us. Most of us have grown so accustomed to having these digital devices around us that we have forgotten the roles they have played in the advancement of human civilization. Besides, technological advances have reshaped numerous cultural aspects of various societies. These specializations make work practices more efficient and innovative, to the point where these devices have largely replaced the need for manual labor in a variety of fields. Multinational corporations rely on software and the internet to address competency rather than qualified experts.
Education is one of the most essential and celebrated elements of the life course. Students are frequently confined to a school environment to receive their education, with a professor noting points on a blackboard. Previously, the process was adequate; however, as technological advancements have taken over the world, even education has become a digital concept for many people. When we envision a classroom, we cannot visualize it without a projector or taking notes on a piece of paper and passing them around. Virtual reality is perhaps the most progressive way to educate children today, whether in a physical classroom or through an online virtual session.
Besides, it is used to train the military, for entertainment such as video games, to educate students about medical practices, and even for cross-border business meetings. Our in-depth discussion will center on the medical industry and virtual reality to train future doctors. It's incredible how these practitioners can learn practical methods for working with the human body without the presence of a patient. The paper will further discuss how virtual reality has evolved medical practices and improved them in the last decade. The report will also discuss the new challenges that virtual reality poses in front of professors and medical students while training.
Medical Practitioners' Reliance on Virtual Reality and the Concept of Affordance
Using the concept of affordances, one can comprehend how technology such as virtual reality has advanced sufficiently to change an entire field of education. Many people are surprised to learn that virtual reality is a clever way to find efficient practitioners because it allows them to understand and conduct procedures virtually before dealing with humans.
Virtual reality is made possible by several technological tools that work together. There are output devices, such as power transmitters, and input devices like the internet and laptop computers. Additionally, graphics and information from an environment are fed into the system to create a life-like experience for the students. Professors can adjust the duration, severity, and type of feedback in these virtual systems based on the kind of treatment and a student's ability (SAMADBEIK et al., 2018).
Virtual reality is now heavily used in laparoscopic surgery training. Medicine is a resource-intensive field that necessitates a significant investment to continue. Remote professors face difficulties in disseminating knowledge to a diverse group of students. Teachers have preferred virtual simulation for the past decade because it is repeatable and provides students with a standardized learning method (Yiannakopoulou et al., 2015). It has removed all geographical boundaries and improved how education is delivered to future clinicians.
With the enhanced level of interaction between technology and people (the concept of affordance), students can more easily transfer their virtual training skills in an operating room while treating a natural person. The fundamental skills learned without supervision in a controlled environment are sufficient to distinguish a novice practitioner from an expert. Modern laparoscopic surgeries require different skills than traditional surgical methods, making medical students a must-have. The fulcrum effect, extra eye-hand coordination, and translating a two-dimensional video image to a three-dimensional working environment are examples of these abilities (Yiannakopoulou et al., 2015). These skills are not learned in an operating room but rather in a virtual environment where they can make mistakes without endangering anyone's life. It is an excellent way to train medical professionals to make quick decisions, think quickly, and multitask.
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1: Unrecognizable African American scientist studying anatomy with tablet (Pexels, 2022)
Lapse and Simsurgery are two simulator trainers used to help students develop surgical skills such as camera navigation, vessel dissection, clip application, instrument coordination, bowel anastomosis, and intra-corporeal knots. Another popular simulating tool, the LapMentor, progresses from basic training to teaching. It ha...