LRNT522 Unit 3 Activity 3
As Royal Roads students of the MALAT program, we were given an amazing opportunity to ask questions to George Veletsianos, Professor & Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University around the ever so popular and topical theme of the use of technology and particularly social media platforms in learning, and on the value of research more generally.
Team One, which consisted of Danielle, Amanda and I asked the following question – Does it sometimes feel that by the time you research something in learning and technology, the next new and great platform will appear?
His thoughtful and explicit view point provided a much broader and refreshing approach to sometimes a vey confined and narrow scope.
Veletsianos expressed to just focus on the technology itself is problematic since technology changes ever so rapidly and constantly, leaving the research obsolete, out of focus and less desired if that was the primary focal point of the research.
He went on to suggest that the focus should not be on the technology, rather what’s more important, focusing and studying the problems we are facing in education and looking at how to solve those.
Veletsianos emphasized when focusing on the problem, exam and see how people address it and what peoples experiences are within it.
I really liked his example on the use of Facebook in the classroom. He suggested if teachers focused on Facebook (the technology) and use of it in the classroom and tried to use it to connect to new audiences and perhaps use it for announcements and then if Facebook changes, teachers may use it less and it really didn’t get to the root and heart of solving the problem in education. If the focus were shifted to the problem we are trying to solve, for example, how can we encourage and incorporate broader diversity of thought in the classroom, one of the solutions could have been use of technology to enable a larger, broader and diverse audience to collaborate and connect with whether it be SKYPE or Facebook, but it would have also given a broader brush stroke to what other possibilities there were to increase diversity of thought in the classroom, such as bringing in guest speakers and/or look for readings from different schools of thoughts.
“Focusing on technology is a problem in our field and I advise and encourage you to resist the urge and temptation to focus on the technology and look for ways to identify problems we have in education that we have not been able to solve and through your research explore solutions to these problems.” (Veletsianos, 2018, 5:13).
I encourage you to check out George Veletsianos website for more great publications, presentations and learning’s on learning and technology.
Reference
Veletsianos, G. (2018). Audio File #1 [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dxtmbm7ye2v10t/question1.mp3?dl=0
