{"id":233,"date":"2020-09-27T16:50:04","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T23:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/?p=233"},"modified":"2020-10-07T14:57:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T21:57:45","slug":"techno-determinism-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/techno-determinism-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Techno-Determinism in Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Thomas Park<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
By Denys Koval & Christopher Rowe<\/h5>\n

Over the past week, we\u2019ve been exploring a disagreement in the EdTech world known as the Great Media Debate.\u00a0 In the late 80\u2019s and early 90\u2019s, Richard E. Clark and Robert B. Kozma separately authored a series of articles presenting their opposing views on the issue of whether or not media has an impact on learning.\u00a0 Clark\u2019s (1994) position was that media was simply a delivery tool for learning methods and while necessary, could be replaced with a media with overlapping attributes that performed similar cognitive functions (pp. 22, 26).\u00a0 Kozma (1994), on the other hand, believed that the specific cluster of attributes associated with a medium, presented opportunities for employing unique learning methods (pp. 13-14).\u00a0 These opposing views continue to influence how educational technologists introduce new tech into a learning environment.\u00a0 With this debate in mind, we\u2019ve found two contemporary articles discussing the use of technology in the classroom and considered how both Clark and Kozma would respond to them.<\/p>\n

Individualism<\/h3>\n

Zo\u00eb Bernard (2017), tech reporter for Business Insider magazine, wrote an article titled Here\u2019s how technology is shaping the future of education<\/a>, focusing on how technology is increasingly providing educators with the ability to assess their students on an individual level, and thereby tailor lesson plans to suite their unique needs.\u00a0 She pointed to developments in the EdTech industry which have increased the accessibility of this strategy.\u00a0\u00a0 Kozma and Clark would have interpreted Bernard\u2019s article differently, to be certain.\u00a0 They would have neither agreed on the proper implementation of the new technology mentioned in the article, nor on the method of its development.<\/p>\n

Bernard described how the increased availability of adaptive learning software such as DreamBox<\/a>, which can monitor an individual student\u2019s progress and provide the appropriate curriculum for their skill level, is allowing educators to work with learners at a pace set by the student. If presented with software like DreamBox, Kozma might argue that the availability of this new technology would provide educators with an opportunity to develop new teaching methods to best take advantage of its unique characteristics.\u00a0 Kozma (1994) asserted that theories to direct the use of media in instructional design should consider both the unique capabilities of media, but also the \u201ccomplexities of the social situations with which they are used\u201d (p. 15).\u00a0 Classrooms are indeed social environments.\u00a0 If we change the social environment of the classroom, by tailoring the experience to meet the needs of the individual, Kozma would likely say that we must develop new teaching methods designed specifically for the unique cluster of attributes presented by the media forcing that change.\u00a0 In contrast, Clark might argue that it was always possible for an educator to learn about the progress of an individual student and tailor learning plans to meet their needs, but that this software makes the teacher\u2019s ability to do that more efficient.\u00a0 Clark (1994) insisted that \u201cthe methods used in CBI [computer-based instruction] can be and are used by teachers in live instruction\u201d (p.24).\u00a0 He believed that teaching methods and the media used to deliver them are separate and that various media could be used to achieve the same goal.\u00a0 The difference, he claimed, in the way that various media impact learning, is the efficiency with which a particular media might achieve learning outcomes (p. 22).<\/p>\n

In her article, Bernard (2017) included a quote from DreamBox\u2019s senior vice-president of learning, Tim Hudson, who expressed that \u201cit\u2019s important that we listen to teachers and administrators to determine the ways technology can assist them in the classroom.\u201d\u00a0 While Kozma and Clark likely would have both approved of Hudson\u2019s insistence on communicating with educators in the development of new tools, chances are they would disagree on how that communication should take place.\u00a0 Kozma would likely have been interested in seeing what technology had been developed, so that he could create effective teaching methods based on whatever new capabilities that technology presents.\u00a0 He argued that while the implementation of a specific technology would limit the options available to educators, the capabilities of that media would also provide direction on what could be accomplished with it (Kozma, 1994, p. 20).\u00a0 Clark, on the other hand, would probably have approached software developers looking for the technology that would most efficiently facilitate a specific teaching method he already had in mind.\u00a0 It was Clark\u2019s (1994) position that \u201cit is important to derive media that are capable of delivering the method at the least expensive rate and in the speediest fashion\u201d (p. 26).\u00a0 From his perspective, it would be the teaching method that should dictate the choice of a technology.<\/p>\n

Socially Accessible<\/h1>\n

Celano, the author of the article Technology in the classroom: How educators are using remote technology as they return to school<\/a>, published on Owl Labs\u2019 website, references NBC News Correspondent Kerry Sanders, who reported that due to Covid-19, about 30% of the kids from Charter School USA stopped learning due to the lack of engagement between teachers and their students. Owl Labs then promotes the Meeting Owl as a solution for a virtual classroom, emphasizing its 360\u00b0 camera, which allows educators to teach as they normally would by treating their virtual classroom as a physical one, therefore allowing remote students to stay engaged.<\/p>\n

Clark might argue that while the Meeting Owl increases the accessibility of the learning method that the teacher is employing, while it cannot be directly responsible for motivating learning. He would cite Salomon and others \u201cwho draw on the new cognitive theories which attribute motivation to learners’ beliefs and expectations about their reactions to external events \u2013 not to external events alone\u201d (Clark, 1994, p. 23).<\/p>\n

Kozma might argue that Meeting Owl can be responsible for increasing the motivation to learn by making students feel like they are a part of a social process, which is achieved by facilitating interaction with physical resources as well as other students in the classroom. \u201cLearning is not the receptive response to instruction’s “delivery\u201d. Rather, learning is an active, constructive, cognitive and social process by which the learner strategically manages available cognitive, physical, and social resources to create new knowledge by interacting with information in the environment\u201d (Kozma, 1994, p. 3).<\/p>\n

References<\/h1>\n

Bernard, Z. (2017, December 27). Here\u2019s how technology is shaping the future of education. Business Insider<\/em>. https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/how-technology-is-shaping-the-future-of-education-2017-12#even-with-technology-being-used-in-more-and-more-classrooms-teachers-will-be-as-important-as-ever-3<\/a><\/p>\n

Celano, K. (2020). Technology in the Classroom: How Educators are Using Remote Technology as They Return to School. Owl Labs.<\/em> https:\/\/www.owllabs.com\/blog\/technology-in-the-classroom-how-educators-are-using-remote-technology-as-they-return-to-school<\/a><\/p>\n

Clark, R.E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42<\/em>(2), 21-29. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/BF02299088<\/a><\/p>\n

Kozma, R.B. (1994). Will<\/em> media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42<\/em>(2), 7-19. https:\/\/doi-org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca\/10.1007\/BF02299087<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Denys Koval & Christopher Rowe Over the past week, we\u2019ve been exploring a disagreement in the EdTech world known as the Great Media Debate.\u00a0 In the late 80\u2019s and early 90\u2019s, Richard E. Clark and Robert B. Kozma separately authored a series of articles presenting their opposing views on the issue of whether or … Continue reading Techno-Determinism in Education<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}