In mid-May I will be teaching a general education course, an introduction to educational technology. The audience is a mix of undergraduate students from across campus. While I am quite thrilled at this endeavor, I wanted to take a moment and tap into my learning Can you provide a brief description of what an educational technologist is? I thought it would make sense to get a definition from people engaged in the practice on a daily basis.
So I put it to you:
1) What is an educational technologist?
2) What does an educational technologist do?
3) What are the social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology that you feel are important to consider?
Of course, any other insights you might want to provide are clearly welcome and encouraged.
Keywords: computing, educational technology, learning, networks, teaching
Comments
Educational Technologists are people who are adept at getting teachers to use resources - other than - text books to enhance their curriculums. Of course, ETs do other things - too many to name - but this is my 2-cents. I hope it helps
@harold Thanks for the tip. Let's see where this will take us.
@amy Thank you. That's a good start.
@balu Thank you. I will look into Plough's work.
@brian Thank you. I like the way you think.
1. A teacher that knows how and when to select and employ technology within a teaching and learning setting.
2. An educational technologist works either individually or with a team to conduct a needs analysis, perform an instructional design, programme a software development tool, work with a graphics programme and create a product that utilises technology to function. Sometimes educational technologists have to wear many different hats and think quite differently each time they don the various hats. Sometimes the process is complex and may last months and even years for a single educational technology project. At other times the process may begin and end in less than one day.
3. Answering this in brief is difficult. The interface design should be user friendly, sensible and practical. The application of the technology should be appropriate ~ it should be a best fit scenario and simply not a use of technology "because it is there". The creation and development of the educational technology should not have a deleterious impact on the quality of life of the educational technologist. The finished product should have a positive impact on the end users as well ~ not waste their time.
Best wishes,
John Larkin
<a href="http://blog.larkin.net.au/">TeachTech</a>
I will only speak to number 3, but my experience indicates that it is very hard to keep up the work of being an "early adopter" for yourself and simultaneously performing as cheerleader, coach, and tech support for colleagues who are (as expected) all over the map with respect to interest and tech ability. You can get burned out (or burn out your people) if you are not quite careful to keep a balance between innovation and realistic expectation.
I think it is essential, particularly if you work *without* a group of like-minded individuals, to have a support group for yourself. Set realistic goals (which may be far lower than your ideals) and celebrate incremental change. My most powerful metaphor for the 10 years I served in this capacity was "the drip will wear away the stone"! Society changes, tools change, and a constant "drip" will eventually produce awareness. I do think that the most powerful ideas are the ones people arrive at themselves (however much the seed was planted by someone else!).
Teachers use technology for educational purposes, but remain teachers. For a few years, as a teenager (1985-87) I pumped gas after school. One of the guys I worked with called himself a "liquid petroleum transfer technician." This was done with a sense of humour and irony. If I watched and learned, one day I wouldn't just "pump gas."
I would like to distinguish between adopting new technology and social change. New technology leads to changes in the social, but is that the change we are working for? I am not suggesting we stop the search for a technical solution to education, what I am suggestion is a seperation, or a marked distinction at least for the purpose of analysis, between our desired social relationships and the resulting social relationships of adopted technologies.
An educational technologists advocating for new technology is not the same as a Black Panther, for a radical example, advocating for education. It's an important distinction that gets lost in awyatt's comment.
Hi Chris, I had an interesting debate at my blog recently about whether educational technology was an obsolete term, complete with twitter poll (brought about by a review of the Institute of Ed Tech where I work in which they said it was): http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/05/is-ed-tech-an-o. The general consensus was that it was still an okay term. As for what they do, I think their role may have changed. At one point it may have been to _develop_ technologies for use in education, but increasingly I think the commercial/technical world is too fast moving and so they have three main roles: i) to intepret how technologies can be used in education ii) to research how people learn using technology/how technology influences learning iii) to write papers so they can go to conferences in Hawaii and talk about it :)
Martin