Tag Archives: EdTech

LRNT 523

Lessons From the Past

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After completing this week’s assigned readings and checking out a few online articles suggested by some of our classmates, I get the distinct impression that we continue to relive our past mistakes with regards to education and technology (Reiser, 2001a, 2001b).  One example of Reiser’s (2001a) claims still being relevant is where he describes five categories for instructional design and technology (design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation) that are still important and can be applied to many situations in our educational world today (pp. 53-54).  Where I found his argument dated is when he describes the effect that constructivism has had on the development of instructional principles (Reiser, 2001b, p.65).  Although not always used, in my experience with course design, development, and delivery a constructivist approach is a commonly used practice when teaching and learning with technology.

The first lesson that Reiser (2001a) describes that is meaningful to my work is that when any new medium enters the educational system, the initial response is great interest and a feeling that it will revolutionize education, only to eventually have interest subside and the medium have no lasting effect on education (pp. 61-62).  I found that this was the case with our colleges roll out of teaching with iPads, first there was great interest from faculty, but now many teachers use them sparsely and have gone back to their traditional teaching methods.  Another lesson that is still relevant to my work is in the same vein as my previous point, that even though their is a great increase in the presence of technology in the classroom this does not correlate to an increase of using the technology for educational purposes (p. 60).  We have tech everywhere in our college, but without proper professional development for teachers and students it does not gain traction.

One lesson that seems to contradict my last position at the college (designing and developing online courses) is Skinner’s (as cited in Reiser, 2001b, p. 59) assertion that programmed instructional materials be presented in small chunks followed by frequent questions and immediate feedback.  While I agree that small steps of instruction and immediate feedback are important, we had many complaints from students that they had a sort of click fatigue, where they would be clicking so many times it almost became mindless.  There needs to be a balance of content, formative questioning, and feedback.

References

Reiser, R. A.  (2001a).  A history of instructional design and technology: Part I: A history of instructional media. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(1), 53-64.

Reiser, R. A. (2001b). A history of instructional design and technology: Part II: A history of instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(2), 57-67.

 

 

 

LRNT 523, Uncategorised

What’s the plan Stan?

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The first thing I noticed when I entered the search terms ‘education, technology, history’ is that most of the websites provided information and timelines regarding software and hardware that have been developed over the years.  Bates (2014) provides an overview of the history of how we moved through the basic levels of educational technologies:

  • Oral communication as the earliest form of sharing knowledge

  • Written communication where early correspondence education started in the 1840’s in England

  • Broadcasting and video education that started with the BBC in the 1920’s

  • Computer based learning that began with B.F. Skinner experimenting with teaching machines in the 1950’s

  • Computer networking where higher education institutions began using networks to assist in learning in the 1980’s

  • Online learning environments (LMS’s such as Moodle) that began in the 1990’s providing comprehensive spaces for teaching and learning

What I found interesting is that much of the focus on educational technology is on the hardware and software and not the pedagogy and theory of using educational technologies properly in order to effectively integrate them into the classroom.  Once I added ‘pedagogy’ to my search terms several articles did appear that related more to more of the theory behind applying technology to education.  One early framework for the integration of technology is the TPCK theoretical model where attention is paid not only to the technology itself, but also to the pedagogy, content, and knowledge (Koehler, Mishra, Yahya, 2007, pp. 741-743).

What I have found in my experience as a teacher using technology and a faculty mentor in integrating technology is that people get distracted by the technology itself and tend to focus on the ‘cool, new tech toys’.   More focus on how to make a plan to apply technology in the classroom is needed in order to enhance learning, not just supplement it.

References

Bates, T.  (2014).   A short history of educational technology.  In Online learning and distance education Resources.  Retrieved from https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/

Koehler, M.J., Mishra, P., Yahya, K.  (2007).  Tracing the development of teacher knowledge in a design seminar: Integrating content, pedagogy and technology.  Computers and Education.  (49).  740-762.  Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/31313419/KoehlerMishraYahya2007.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1504882412&Signature=EKBIIMw3FGgwNn%2BEwR2BpJEyB3k%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DTracing_the_development_of_teacher_knowl.pdf