When defining educational technology, it is important to remember
that the word, technology, has evolved in the industrial and computer
age. Most all of the definitions of technology include the word,
“science,” in their definition. It cannot be denied that science has
played its role, in my mind, technology extends far beyond the
scientific. Consider the lever as an example. Plutarch relates, in his Life of Marcellus,
that Archimedes once said that given a lever strong enough and a place
to stand that he could move the world. There are a great number of
equations which will prove that a lever can lift great weights and these
equations have been permutated and manipulated by freshman physics
student and Nobel Laureate alike, but the fact remains that a lever,
while it is technology, or was in the days of Ancient Greece, had very
little to do with science. Undoubtedly the lever was discovered by a
field worker trying to move a heavy rock from a field. It was, there can
be no doubt, a great gift to mankind and the scientific community (what
else are you going to teach freshman physics students) but it was not a
scientific discovery. This fact leads to the first half of my
definition of educational technology. Technology is anything which makes
a task easier.
Having defined technology, it must now be extended into the
educational domain. Education is as old as civilization. Each generation
wants to pass its knowledge on to those who come after. Any parent or
educator in the world knows how difficult this can be at times and thus
to make this task easier, they employ educational technology; that is
to say they employ tools which will make the task of educating easier.
Applying this definition to educational technology expands the concept
greatly. All of a sudden all the tools employed in the classroom become
educational technology, from the glitziest iPad to the slate primers
from yesteryear.
Some may blanch at this definition of educational technology.
After all, we have all embarked on a journey to obtain a Master’s Degree
in this subject, and not a one of us has picked up a piece of slate or a
piece of chalk. To those of us enrolled in this program, educational
technology is all about the tablets, phablets and laptops. The very
phrase, educational technology, evokes thoughts of interactive exercises
and personalized educational experiences, but while the methodology and
delivery has changed, the art of educating the future has not. In the
end, without the patience and creativity of an educator, a tablet
computer is no more than a device on which a student can play Angry
Birds.
Consider a recent study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer.
Their research has found that students who eschew the technological
advances of the laptop computer and take long hand notes have better
retention than their peers using the modern technology. (Mueller,
Oppenheimer 2014) In this case educational technology is a notebook and a
ballpoint pen. While it lacks the bells and whistles of its trendier
Apple counterpart. These tools make education easier and are, in fact,
technology. This concept dovetails nicely with Skinner’s concept of the
teaching machine. Such tools are used today in the form of interactive
exercises on computers, but are the results as effective as those of the
teaching machine where the student is forced to concentrate on a single
question and write the answer?
Technology in any form makes lives easier, but in order for
technology to succeed, it needs to be used properly. Educational
technology, be it chalk or silicon, in the hands of the skilled educator
is a powerful tool. That being said, even the most powerful tool in the
hands of unskilled craftsman is ineffective, while a simple tree branch
and fulcrum in the hands of genius, can move the world.
Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier
Than the Keyboard Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,
Psychological Science, 25 (6), 1159-1168. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1159
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