I stumbled across this blog post recently by Katrin Becker and have been thinking about her critiques of the Ed Tech field. I have harbored similar concerns, although ones tempered by my background as an educator and as a (web) designer.
I was struck by the following in particular:
Educational Technologists, for the most part, do not know enough about how technology works to use it well. I studied CS for 7 years. I wouldn’t suggest that everyone in Ed Tech needs to do the same, but I DO know that they really need to learn much more about the technology than most are getting now. There are approaches and designs I can create that someone without my background just can’t. Just what subset of what I know is core to EdTech? That part I don’t know yet, but I do know that asking someone who only knows either discipline will not give you a useful answer (in the same way that you should not ask a mathematician what the average university student needs to know about math).
There is much in the statement that I agree with, think ultimately educational technology is about both education and technology. What I mean is that educational technologists don't necessarily have to know everything there is possibly know about technology but we should know enough about technology to be able to create, design, and implement technology to foster and facilitate learning. Perhaps we aired too much on the side of focusing on learning theory, instructional theory, educational theory and assume that our students will either develop or possess the technological awareness and skills to apply theory in context.
I graduated from a PhD program whose informal motto was, "We don't do technology, we think about technology." This notion was held proudly, and rightfully so, as technology and its implementation can not be seen as independent of ideology, culture, and economy. The program (at least in the late 90s when I was there) saw itself as the counterbalance to, or critique of the predominate discourses in instructional technology and instructional design grounded in some form of “scientific” practice: behaviorism, cognitivism, systems theories, or various forms of constructivism. The idea is that these perspectives can be limiting because they focus primarily on how to teach with technology, not on how those technologies shape the world in which we live, the ways in which we work, learn, are entertained, communicate, and form relationships. While "traditional" approaches to instructional technology are typically predicated on the principles of systematicity, replicability, and predictability, I began my graduate work considering the social and cultural aspects of technology - not doing technology so to speak.
I'm the only person struggling with this issue - the tension between technical skill and theoretic knowledge can be found across the field. Heck - the field isn't even sure what to call itself (for example the recent piece: Labels DO Matter! A Critique of AECT’s Redefinition of the Field)
I don't believe someone should go to a graduate program in education to “learn Flash” – we are not equipped to teach that at the level that other institutions are. Someone can go to a local community or technical college and get great training on Flash–they won't get there is knowledge about how to best utilize the technology and the particular and specific affordances of that technology to facilitate learning.
In my own practice, both teaching and research, have come back to my roots in “making stuff.” I've rediscovered Pappert and the notion of constructionism. For better or worse, I "do" Educational Technology - I am an educational technology generalist - a Ed Tech guy. Since I stopped being a high school English teacher in 1996, I have been immersed in emerging technology from the early days of the WWW, to switch from analog to digital video editing, to assistive technology, to the emergence of mobile and handheld computing.
Getting back to being more actively involved in technology has been exciting and I think invigorated my research and professional life, and it is building stuff provides a nice balance to the more ethereal products and processes of academic publishing.
With this all in mind I've been working to rethink redesign my classes to provide more engaging experiences and interaction with technology for my students and to model the types of technology development research that I am finding so useful.
Next semester I'm completely reconsider closing one of my classes with this in mind and I am excited to see what will be the outcome. I'll do my courses can provide enough points for my students to explore new technology forms and apply the theory and concepts that they're learning undergraduate program to be able to create and foster meaningful instuctional technology experiences.
Forward!
