What is Educational Technology?

EDU626 Integrating Educational TechnologySpring 2010

What is Technology?

A Definition of Technology – The human process of applying resources

to satisfy our wants and needs to extend our capabilities. • http

://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/ENGR019_301Winter2002/ADefinitionofTechnology.htm

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What about Media? What do you mean, media?

– Not mediums (that’s spiritualism)!– Nor:

• When the media ask him [George W. Bush] a question, he answers, ‘Can I use a lifeline?’ ~ Robin Williams

– 2media 1 : a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression; especially : MEDIUM 2b1me·di·um 2 : a means of effecting or conveying something: b plural usually media (1) : a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment

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Is there a connection?

Media are for communication Therefore, technology applications in media

extend our communication capabilities– In developing this site, we, the students of the

Vancouver Film School-Multimedia, first had to define what the term media involved. It was our belief that the word itself implies the notion of communication. Therefore, anything that was once used to relay a message would be applicable.• The Dead Media Project

http://student.vfs.com/~deadmedia/dedmedia.html

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Dead Media?– “. . . some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the

phenakistoscope. The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles. Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon Hirmondo. The various species of magic lantern. The pneumatic transfer tubes that once riddled the underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera Device a medium? How about the Big Character Poster Democracy Wall in Peking in the early 80s?

– Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the problem. • Bruce Sterling Dead Media Manifesto

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What is Educational Technology? Educational technology is

– the application of technology in education– or, the application of devices that extend our

capabilities in ways that enhance instruction– Thus, chalk and a blackboard, pen and

paper, textbooks and the big ol’ pointer, they all are forms of educational technology!

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A broad concept7

An evolving concept8

Computing History

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/

http://www.thocp.net/

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http://www.computerhistory.org/

Internet History

http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/

http://www.archive.org/

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

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Media in Schools

Stone tablets?

• Wax tablets?

• Slate tablets?

• Silicon tablets?

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Applications of media & technology

What are the applications of various types of media and technology in the classroom or the school library media center?– Tablets– Paper-based media– Electronic media– Multimedia– Etc.

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Also assistive technology13

Technology includes Web 2.0 Blogs and podcasts, oh my!– Blogs and podcasts are changing the way we interact

with information on the Internet . . . These are part of a reinvention of the Internet, referred to as Web 2.0, which is focused on using Internet technologies to connect people and information.

– While the idea as a whole extends into social bookmarking, collaborative development, and other tools, Web 2.0 is firmly rooted in the basic ideas of blogs.

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Read Harris’s blog Infomancy

The implications of web 2.0 Power of Anyone – Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, describes

the coming of "mass amateurization" in the Power of One. He says the printing press was the first mass amateurization. Before the printing press, only scribes could read and write. After the printing press, it became common for everyone to read and write. Today we have the Internet and all the devices that are a part of it. Today information is no longer disseminated only by large media corporations. Anyone anywhere has the potential to disseminate information and opinion.

» http://flatworldschools.blogspot.com/» SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2009

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November on participation From “Myths and Opportunities” video

– “One of the things I think is critical is, a kid needs to make a contribution . . . Well, what we did, I believe, over time—and the irony is, technology did this—because we invented all kinds of machinery, we don’t need kids working any more. And so, we’ve robbed them of their sense of making a contribution to community.”

– “I think one of the breakthrough ideas is to change the concept of the learner into some who becomes a contributor by doing their work. It means we have to redefine the work. That represents the shift of control from the teacher . . . to the network of children”

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What is November’s proposal? Encourage

children to be:– Researchers– Reflectors– Writers– “Students

researching the kinds of assignments they would like to do, rather than the teacher coming up with the assignment.”

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The End