Foundations (ETEC 511)
Foundations of Educational Technology (core course)
This course provided me with both a disciplinary tour and poststructuralist deconstruction of the foundations of e-learning, educational technology, learning technologies, and new media. The course addressed the anthropological, economic, historical, phenomenological, philosophical, political, psychological, sociological, and spiritual foundations of educational technology along with a critique of these foundations.
Artifacts
Artifact 1: Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) – Little more than Smoke and Mirrors…
Artifact 2: The Gender Digital Divide: No Girl Left Behind
Artifact 3: Collaborative Weebly Site on Spirituality of Educational Technology
Artifact 4: Philosophy of Technology and Learning
General Reflection:
I chuckled when I read that the Definition of Educational Technology (AECT, 1977) was a 169 page book (Januszewski, 2001, p 78 ). That’s no short definition! I can understand that it took that many pages to analyze the ideas and concepts used in educational technology and to show how they were related to one another.
I became quite interested in the discussion around the word “theory” as it relates to educational technology. Indeed the word does appear to have many definitions and applications and I’m in agreement with educational technology being a theoretical construct but I’m still not certain about it being a theory in and of itself.
When I took ETEC 511 in the fall of 2011 I was teaching an online course for the first time. Not just teaching it, but over the summer I created the curriculum. I made good use of the six areas of focus in designing curriculum for online courses by Brown & Voltz (2005) which they list as: activity, scenario, feedback, delivery, context, and impact.
My immediate concern was that I didn’t have enough time in a day to provide the type of feedback to my students to the degree that I would like. I questioned how to measure this and how much feedback was necessary. Perhaps some of my underlying nervousness was actually about this being the first time through and I really wanted it to be successful and produce the end result “the positive learning impact” of the course that I designed.
In my working and leisure time online I have not noticed the effect of religion on people’s Internet use. I have noticed that some religious people use the Internet for various purposes such as online dating, blogging, Facebook, marketing, blogging & e-newsletters to chronicle their mission’s work and ask for donations. I have also noticed and taken part in religious services offered via web streaming.
Is technology spiritual? Can technology be spiritual?
I believe that something that isn’t human cannot have spirituality. The effects of spiritual beliefs on attitudes toward technology is a starting place but spirituality is not a belief in some higher power, practice, prayer, meditation or technology but perhaps it is a connection with our inner thoughts, feelings, and values. I believe that our level of awareness of self or willingness and ability to connect with our conscience is directly related to spiritual health.
More and more real-life churches across the country are spreading their messages online and via web-streaming. Facebook and other social networks also connect people in worship across the globe.
Technology has taken on a spiritual component and raise the concern that computers lack basic soul or spiritual aspects of a human but have some mental capacities. However, we must ask ourselves that if technology was created by humans then any such illusion of spirit within the machine is only what we project on it.
I learned that Kurzweil is a strong advocate of Artificial Intelligence (Kurzweil, 1998). He believes that with neurological architecture, sufficient complexity, and the right combination of analog and digital processes, computers will become “spiritual” like humans.
Reflecting toward the future:
What do I see as the supports that would help me to further cultivate my practice of pioneering leadership?
- I am a life-long learner and that will be the key ingredient in cultivating my pioneering leadership. I will continue to stay on top of the basic elements, maintain my awareness of the competencies in the field of educational technology, remain creative in finding solutions to the perceived barriers to implementation, continue teaching and learning online and grow in the practice.
How does theory learned in this course offer me insights about how I might nurture a change in the culture of my community?
- When technology dominates our time we cannot maintain the balance that allows us to retain a spiritual health. Technological contact with people may not bring about feelings of being connected and may result in people feeling isolated and vulnerable.
Implementation, surprises, and consequences? Regrets?
- There appears to be a general lack of concern or even awareness regarding the ways people are adapting and redefining their expectations for human contact and relationships.
How does this learning affect your practice or what new perspectives have you discovered in reflection?
- Therefore, technology and new media have transformed not only the worlds of work, leisure and education but the world of spirituality as well. Some say that the use of technology has made people more “religious” as they now have access to the holy bible online and may be connected to a site that provides them with consistent inspirational thoughts.
- Linked computers = congregation? This thought stays with me.
Next Steps:
- My interest here is mainly philosophical.
- In reading Kurtzweil (1998) I learned about the Turing Test, first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as a means for testing intelligence in a machine. Kurzweil (1998) recalls that the Turing Test consists of a situation in which a human judge interviews the computer and a human over terminal lines. If the human judge is unable to tell which interviewee is human and which is machine, the machine is deemed to possess human-level intelligence. Kurzweil (1998) tells us that computers still fail the test but confidence is increasing that they will be in a position to pass it within one or two more decades.
- I will continue reading in this area.
| Pioneer Trail | ||||
| Bullet Trail |
