Archive for September 16th, 2010

Sep 16 2010

Defining Educational Technology

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Question from the course:

Firstly, define educational technology. Secondly, identify nature and characteristics of a good ET program based on your own field observations and readings. Thirdly, give some examples such as philosophical, psychological, social and cultural foundations of ET.

My answer:

I’d like to take a stab at defining Educational Technology as a step towards answering your 2nd and 3rd questions.

ET is any tool used to enhance learning. We could contrast it to Adaptive Technology, which would be all the tools used in improving accessibility for the disadvantaged, for instance, speech recognition software. Then we have the study of technology or Technology Education – programming, hardware, various applications, web design, etc. (The reading suggest that it is no longer popular to study programming in school, a shift that I have observed personally as our programming/computer science teacher barely gets to teach his specialty anymore.)

I have no trouble defining ET, what seems more elusive is trying to limit the technologies (tools) that we can include as part of that category. It seems that all sorts of tools are now being used in education, whether they be social networking tools, design tools, visual literacy tools, LMS, along with many of the adaptive tools we have begun to adopt more regularly such as touch screens and voice recognition software.

So the lines are now blurred. We cannot simply study ET as technology is pervasive in all aspects of our lives. In order to improve our teaching practices, it is wiser to study and understand how technology has effected change in society, whether it be the way in which we communicate or the way we define the world around us.

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Sep 16 2010

The Benefits of ePortfolios

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As I prepare for my exchange in AU this winter, I’ve been looking over the course content and requirements of an applied learning program called Business Office Administration.  The course is mostly loaded on Moodle at this point (a school requirement) and I am trying to build some interactivity into it.  I started yesterday with a simple quiz.

One of the assessment requirements is what I would define as a portfolio – a folder with examples of completed assignments.  I’ve asked if this portfolio could be in electronic format.  For now, I was told to bring this up at the committee meeting in Feb.  So armed with this document http://www.danwilton.com/eportfolios/benefits.php, I will be glad to expound on the benefits of ePortfolios.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of different teaching methods in another country.  However, I am lead to believe that this college will be open to adding more electronic content into their courses.  So I’ll give it a try.  I can certainly use some of my many blogs as prime examples to further my case.

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