Defining Technology Integration
Ubiquitous: That is how I see successful and effective Technology Integration no matter which model or framework you follow.
Do I get the A+ for this post Kim? 🙂 Probably not yet, unless I expand on my statement. Right?
This first post for this course 4 of COETAIL has brought me back to my thoughts I expressed in course 1. Remember, we had to express our understanding of information technology, BLOOMS and SAMR, 21st century learning etc. and my blog posts were full of my own interrogative dialogues about my own views. I think Course 4 is going to see me expanding on those narratives and coming to a conclusion, my conclusion. It remains to see how my course mates and my instructor see my understanding and help me improve on it. Improve I shall, via my own research, work, experiences and more importantly by peer and instructor feedback for life long learning is what I believe in.
I would like to start talking about understanding of instructional technology by connecting to my first COETAIL blog post. I found this interesting YouTube video which, in 5 minutes, takes us through some of the highlights of educational technological evolution of the past century.
What I found most interesting in this video is how the advancements in communication and media technologies were associated and tied with their impact in education and how at every milestone moment the limits of those impacts were prematurely judged. I am also amazed by the images of classrooms used where you do not see a redefinition of learning spaces till the later years of the first decade of the 21st century.
Connecting back to my thoughts expressed in first course I believe that in past 30 years there has been a fast paced evolution in the computational and media technologies with visible large scale impact on communications and information sharing. That in turn has brought about an evolution in our ideas and approaches within learning and teaching practices. All the frameworks being designed, tested and used are an attempt by education sector to catch up with this ‘evolution’. For me the key word is ‘evolution’ and I see this current phase of evolution in the same way printing press enabled the knowledge of a single person to spread out in the world in form of a published and printed book. There were challenges then, there are challenges today and there will be challenges tomorrow.
My approach and understanding in implementation of technology integration in educational practices is always geared towards its effectiveness in personalising the learning experience for every student and to fire up the creative and higher order thinking skills in them as well as providing a mechanism for instant and effective feedback from the teacher. SAMR, TPACK, BLOOMS or any other new framework for understanding such processes will fit in fine as long as we keep our goal in sight.
1 COMMENT
Totally agree with your definition, as well as your thoughts on the evolution of technology. That’s usually how I describe it to parents and teachers as well. A+!