EDU626 Integrating Educational Technology
Spring 2009
What is Educational Technology?
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What is Technology?
A Definition of Technology
– The human process of applying resources
to satisfy our wants and needs to extend
our capabilities.
– Technology is defined above as the
process we use to solve problems and
extend our human capabilities. We can
also think of technology as knowledge and
as hardware (artifacts).
• http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/ENGR019_301Win
ter2002/ADefinitionofTechnology.htm
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What about Media?
What do you mean, media?
– Not mediums (that’s spiritualism)!
– Nor:
• When the media ask him [George W. Bush] a question, he
answers, ‘Can I use a lifeline?’
~ Robin Williams
– 2media 1 : a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or
expression; especially : MEDIUM 2b
1me·di·um 2 : a means of effecting or conveying
something:
b plural usually media (1) : a channel or system of
communication, information, or entertainment
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Is there a connection?
Media are for communication
Therefore, technology applications in media
extend our communication capabilities
– In developing this site, we, the students of the
Vancouver Film School-Multimedia, first had to
define what the term media involved. It was our
belief that the word itself implies the notion of
communication. Therefore, anything that was
once used to relay a message would be applicable.
• The Dead Media Project
http://student.vfs.com/~deadmedia/frame.html
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Dead Media?
– “. . . some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the
phenakistoscope. The teleharmonium. The Edison
wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The Panorama.
Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles.
Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon
Hirmondo. The various species of magic lantern.
The pneumatic transfer tubes that once riddled the
underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera
Device a medium? How about the Big Character
Poster Democracy Wall in Peking in the early 80s?
– Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the
problem.
• Bruce Sterling Dead Media Manifesto
http://www.deadmedia.org/modest-proposal.html
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What is Educational Technology?
Educational technology is
– the application of technology in education
– or, the application of devices that extend our
capabilities in ways that enhance instruction
– Thus, chalk and a blackboard, pen and
paper, textbooks and the big ol’ pointer, they
all are forms of educational
technology!
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A broad concept
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An evolving concept
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Computing History
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/
http://www.computerhistory.org/
http://www.thocp.net/
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Internet History
http://www.archive.org/
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/
http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html
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Media in Schools
Stone tablets?
• Wax tablets?
• Slate tablets?
• Silicon tablets?
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Applications of media & technology
What are the applications of various
types of media and technology in the
classroom or the school library media
center?
–
–
–
–
–
Tablets
Paper-based media
Electronic media
Multimedia
Etc.
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Also assistive technology
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Technology includes Web 2.0
Blogs and podcasts, oh my!
– Blogs and podcasts are changing the way we interact
with information on the Internet . . . These are part of a
reinvention of the Internet, referred to as Web 2.0,
which is focused on using Internet technologies to
connect people and information.
– While the idea as a whole extends into social
bookmarking, collaborative development, and other
tools, Web 2.0 is firmly rooted in the basic ideas of
blogs.
Read Harris’s blog Infomancy
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The implications of web 2.0
Power of Anyone
– Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, describes
the coming of "mass amateurization" in the Power of
One. He says the printing press was the first mass
amateurization. Before the printing press, only scribes
could read and write. After the printing press, it became
common for everyone to read and write. Today we have
the Internet and all the devices that are a part of it.
Today information is no longer disseminated only by
large media corporations. Anyone anywhere has the
potential to disseminate information and opinion.
» http://flatworldschools.blogspot.com/
»
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2009
The End