The Challenges

The Challenges of being an Early Pioneer

Pioneer life is the story of migration and settlement. The pioneers ran into many problems as they traveled. If they were not prepared for these problems, it could mean a matter of life or death. Some of the hardships the pioneers encountered included harsh weather conditions, fire, illness and wagons breaking.

The challenges of being an Educational Technology Pioneer

The challenges with being a pioneer in educational technology are the costs of the technology itself, convincing others of the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom, and that we should never stop the educational practice that we know works simply to infuse technology into instruction – we need both. Other challenges are poorly created lesson plans and the disconnect between the lesson and the relevant curriculum.

Spector (2001) stated it well when he stated that the big lessons that we should have learned about educational technology in the last 50 years include the following:

• Technology education is not necessarily inexpensive and the benefits are not always clear.
• Wholesale replacements of one form of delivery with another have seldom proven effective across a variety of settings; hybrid or mixed−delivery solutions can offer a path for graceful growth and development while retaining the best features of proven solutions.
• Many learning objectives are unstated or not explicitly formulated; ignoring these is not likely to lead to systemic improvement in learning and instruction.
• Some legitimate learning goals are effectively met with traditional and well−established methods; we need not abandon what we know works well when embracing new technologies.