{"id":418,"date":"2019-09-07T13:29:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T20:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/?p=418"},"modified":"2019-09-20T08:37:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T15:37:06","slug":"dive-into-the-history-of-edtech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/dive-into-the-history-of-edtech\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dive into the History of EdTech"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Photo by Pereanu Sebastian<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash]<\/a><\/p>\n

From my dive into the literature on the history of educational technology, I have observed several important points:<\/p>\n

(a) educational technology is an interdisciplinary field, incorporating educational theories and contexts with the developments in technology and its application in those educational contexts. Some of the pioneers in the field are Skinner (1985)<\/a>\u00a0and Turing (1950)<\/a>, who have contributed to the development and “understanding the power of education technology” (Sims & \u00a0Stone, <\/a>2011).<\/p>\n

(b) the beginning of the history of educational technology is somewhat equivocal in the literature (some sources state it can be traced to the systematization of knowledge by tribe priests and early pictographs (Saettler, 2004), while others refer to 1900s as early implementation phases starting with audiovisual education, including silent films (Williams et al., 2002). Regardless of the historical perspective on the issue, most authors agree that educational technology has developed at the exponential speed over the last several decades.<\/p>\n

(c) the main purpose of educational technology is to enhance the learning process, however, some authors, like Clark believed that\u00a0 educational technology does not influence the learning process and is “mere vehicles that deliver instruction” (Clark, 1983, p. 445 as quoted in Williams et al., 2002, p. 2516). Clark’s observations have further contributed to the underlying assumption that “technology is neutral” (Williams et al., 2002, p. 2516) and sparked the controversy in the field.<\/p>\n

(d) the educational technology has been “transforming Higher Education” (Williams et al., 2002, p. 2522) by increasing interactivity and collaboration in educational processes, addressing students’ needs and empowering the learner (Williams et al., 2002). Distance education is one of the examples (Zvacek, 2004).<\/p>\n

Overall, it is hard to conceive the speed of the technological progress that occurred in the last century, especially with regards to communication devices: from the telephone switchboard to AI-powered iPhone,\u00a0 from simple blackboards to augmented reality and distance learning, and consequently technological impacts this progress has on education today. Even though many would agree with the words of Fullan (2013) that “pedagogy is the driver, and technology is the accelerator”, I wonder whether and how technological advances will drive the educational processes as it continues to evolve in the future.<\/p>\n

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References:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Fullan, M. (2013). Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy, and Change Knowledge<\/i>. London: Pearson Education.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Saettler, P. (2004). The Evolution of American Educational Technology<\/i>. Greenwich: IAP<\/p>\n

Sims, P., & \u00a0Stone, S. <\/a>(2011). Educational Technology. In Oxford Bibliographies Online<\/em>. doi: 10.1093\/obo\/9780199756810-0011<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Williams, S. M., Mehlinger, H. D., Powers, S. M., & Baldwin, R. G. (2002). Technology in Education. In J. W. Guthrie (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Education<\/i> (2nd ed., Vol. 7, pp. 2509-2526). New York, NY: Macmillan. Retrieved from https:\/\/link-gale-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca\/apps\/doc\/CX3403200620\/GVRL?u=otta77973&sid=GVRL&xid=10c0a9d0<\/div>\n

Zvacek, S. (2004). Distance Education. In A. Kovalchik & K. Dawson. Education and Technology. An Encyclopedia. <\/em>Retrieved from http:\/\/www.encyclopedias.biz\/dw\/Encyclopedia%20of%20Education%20And%20Technology.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Photo by Pereanu Sebastian\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash] From my dive into the literature on the history of educational technology, I have observed several important points: (a) educational technology is an interdisciplinary field, incorporating educational theories and contexts with the developments in technology and its application in those educational contexts. Some of the pioneers in the field are Skinner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}