Category Archives: MET courses

Philosophy of Educational Technology

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Computers per se aren’t important – the learning and thinking which happens while students work with computers are important. Interactivity is not what happens when a finger clicks on a mouse button, but what happens when a mind is engaged in work (or play) facilitated through computer technology. (Milt McClaren, personal communication, October 19, 2007)

Technology is a part of our everyday lives. It is continuously evolving; shaping our culture and being shaped by our culture. We are situated in a time and place steeped in technological advancement. As an educator, I am concerned with the affect new technologies have on my students and the effect I can have on my students with these technologies.

My philosophy of educational technology is directly related to my understanding of, and preference for, various theories of learning and teaching. Learning is an active, social process in which participants need to be fully engaged (Driscoll, 2005). To capture the minds of students, this means utilizing media and the mediums with which they are familiar and by which they are motivated. For today’s students, this includes computers, Internet resources, multi-media and social networking. The effective use of these technologies along with “hands-on, minds-on” (Duckworth, Hawkins and Henriques in Koch, 2006, p.93) active learning strategies fosters engagement and can produce a deeper understanding of content and context. As Moody states in Children of Telstar, “media become extensions of the mind” when used to create something (1999). Students will learn about media by doing media.

Teaching with computers, however, must also involve instruction about computers – not necessarily the ‘how’ of computers but the ‘why’ and the ‘who’ of computers. Technology and technological advancements have serious environmental, social and cultural implications about which members of a democratic society need to be aware (Kerr, 2004). Thus, it is important that a critical pedagogical approach (Petrina, 2008) be employed to help students, throughout their time in school, become increasingly aware of the major issues: the digital divide; bias; corporate influence; the power structure; consumerism; misinformation; property rights to name but a few.
While students today may be ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001), they are not necessarily critical consumers of technology. We need to help them become active rather than passive learners. To this end, we must address the impact of technology on the world and the impact they can have on the world with technology.

My Philosophy of Ed. Tech.

My Philosophy of Ed. Tech.

References
Driscoll, M.P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Toronto, ON: Pearson.
Kerr, S. T. (2004). Toward a sociology of educational technology. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 113-142). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Koch, J. (2006). Learning Theories and Pedagogy. In K. Appleton (Ed.), Elementary Science Teacher Education: international perspectives on contemporary issues and practice (ch.6). Routledge Publishing.
Moody, K. (1999). The children of Telstar. New York: Vantage
Petrina, S. (2008) Theory Primer for CUST 601. Vancouver, BC: Tech no-Printing Press.

Prensky, M. (2001). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. On the Horizon 9 (5). Lincoln: NCB University Press.

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Web Design Woes

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I’m still not there… still not there. I really had hoped to be there by now… but I’m not. Luckily, just as I was getting morose about my situation, I came across some sage words from a professional web designer – “Web design is not a merit badge to be added to your uniform in scouts, it is a career choice that demands continual growth and serious dedication.” So I guess it’s understandable that after dabbling for a couple of months, that I’m not there. Seriously though, I’m not planning on a career in web design but am looking forward to the day when i can pass for someone who has some level of literacy!

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Multimedia reflections

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How has multimedia been used effectively to enhance my learning?
While most of my MET courses have relied, in the main, on text based readings, several have included video lectures and other multimedia content to learning modules. I’ve been introduced to TED Talks, MIT open university and a variety of other sources of online academic video through the different courses I’ve taken. Further, the opportunities for my own use of multimedia tools to create presentations has been great.

In particular, ETEC511 – Foundations of Educational Technology – afforded both. This course presented some of the greatest challenge I’ve faced in my post-bacc. efforts to date – the content was varied and the readings were often quite difficult. In this course, student groups were responsible for presenting the course material in a meaningful and engaging way… most did this through searching out contextual multimedia resources. These resources helped to make a very tough set of readings meaningful to me (and my fellow students).

On a related note: I tend to be quite a visual learner; often unable to make sense of complicated technical text instructions. As a result, I find video tutorials very helpful – if not invaluable – when my own ‘messing about’ to find an answer is exhausted. In this course, in particular, these online tutorials have really come in handy – be it Moodle or any of the toolkit activities – when I need an answer, I can generally find one.

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Reflections on StoryTelling

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Link to my storytelling page to view my story – created in Joggle.

Why did you choose this particular tool? I wanted to use a slideshow tool that afforded voice over narration, subtitles and the use of my own images from my computer (without the need to upload to flickr, picasa etc)

How did the tool impact the manner in which you told your story? Initially, prior to figuring out how to create the voice over narration, I used captions to tell the story. It was quite text heavy and not what I had in mind. One I created a sound track (using garage band) and imported the mp3, I was able to delete a great deal of text and leave only the captions introducing the various sea creatures. While this was more in keeping with my goal and with what I know about good presentation (text plus voice plus pictures is not necessarily the best formula for learning – too distracting) the project would have been more effective and much easier to complete using iMovie instead.

How might you use such tools in your own teaching to produce materials for students? Because I teach young children, I would likely provide one tool for a specific task – one that could easily be accomplished by the students using the tool provided – to minimize the frustration. I would likely also do a few whole group stories using a projector. Once the students had explored a few different tools,  I would provide them with more personal choice for a creative project. This is much the same as I would do with non-web 2.0 tools (ie desktop applications).

What kind of impact would you expect to see in your students? I think my students would be highly motivated by the opportunity to create online. I definitely see the benefit of the instant accessibility of their projects on line. With most of the desktop apps we use, it’s up to me to share out their projects due to the number of steps in the process and the fact that most of my students do not have personal webpages. With the cloud computing apps, they can simply send a link to the site where they created their work – instantly sharing it with their family and friends.

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Wiki Wanderings

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Assignment:

  • consider how the group collaboration and discussion within the wiki space differed from what you are accustomed to in an LMS standard threaded discussion space
  • What advantages do you see in using wikis for group collaboration?
  • What are some of the challenges of working with others in a collaborative wiki space?

Reflection: While I see great advantages in using wikis for group collaboration, I think the design of this wiki activity did not necessarily support such collaboration. This module activity was better suited to a blog or discussion forum format. The long threaded ‘sightings’, while interesting to read, would perhaps have garnered some strong conversation within the discussion forums that did not occur in the wiki.

Why is this so? I made my initial wiki posting early and then waited a couple of days to enter the discussion page to give others a chance to post. When I made my way into the discussion page, I found that, rather than beginning with some general discussion and emerging into some big ideas, the format selected by ‘the group’ was now very task specific and linear. I added a few ideas in, but didn’t feel that there was a forum now for some of my comments or reflections on the insights provided by my peers.

What sort of task would better suit the wiki space? I think a truly collaborative, group authorship task such as we entered into during 510, where we selected any wiki entry and edited (in some cases, two or three students would simultaneously edit the same space) that entry to help improve or clarify it. The sense that authorship was less important than the end result and content appeals to me and suits the wiki space well. Reflections, questions and feedback on the discussion page helped editors to further develop the exisiting pages and create new ones in concert with colleagues.

Advantages: true collaboration, co-authoring and knowledge-building (co-construction)

Challenges: People have a difficult time letting go of the sense of authorship i.e. signing names to entries when not really needed; being unwilling or unsure about changing or editing content that is posted… (I fell victim to this in this activity since most discussion entries were ‘signed’ I didn’t feel comfortable revising them and, in turn, added my own brief and signed entry instead!).

It is obviously important, then, to lay out the ground rules in advance of this form of collaborative activity and to make people aware that their entries are ‘understood’ or visible as theirs simply by checking the history.

Suggested Ground rules:

  • Be respectful of the work of contributors – both the content and structure
  • Revise/Reorganize for clarification or correction purposes (especially to address inaccurate information) but don’t simply delete or replace the whole work
  • Do not sign your work other than to add your name to the list of authors or editors in the title bar –  the wiki history pane will record your specific additions/changes
  • Be sure your information is verifiable
  • Cite and link to sources

(some of above ‘rules’ derived from: GM Wiki)

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