I will admit that the request to tie in my initial views on technology and education to the assigned reading forced me to reflect on just how little I knew about the subject’s history. I was fortunate to grow up alongside technology, with my school years seeming to keep pace with it’s use in education so that the advancement appeared to sync with my understanding of it and ability to use it. Its eye opening to dig into exactly how much influence and advancement technology had in the field of education in those first 15 or so years which had seemed a natural progression at the time but now I understand was not without it’s concerns and ‘growing pains’.

While there was a large amount of new information within the reading, the chapter that stood out was regarding E-Learning. I rather naively thought that e-learning was welcomed with open arms by the majority in the academic community when reality was higher education was concerned private companies and commercialization would be detrimental to academics (Weller, 2020), driven largely by an assumption of superiority of face-to-face learning along with an assumption of lower quality online schools. It wasn’t so much that the initial identification of these beliefs in the reading was surprising; it was more so that this thought of degrees and academic achievement from in-person universities being inherently better is still one that lingers today. With the amount of research, studies, and knowledge we have regarding e-Learning and distance education I find it fascinating that many still cling to the idea the resulting education is ‘lesser -than’ when compared to the same degree obtained in person. Without having read beyond the first third of 25 Years of Ed Tech, I am curious to see if this belief if address in later chapters.

References

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. 25 Years of Ed Tech – Martin Weller – Google Books