My Definition of Instructional Technology

Instructional Technology is the art and study of building a learning system and also building a feedback mechanism into the learning system in such a way that the system is sensitive to the dynamics of each individual’s learning experience as well as the whole of everyone’s experience and is built in such a way that the system is ever improving in its effectiveness and delivery of the subject matter.

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Reflections on My Definition

My definition of Instructional Technology as it relates to pedagogy and course design still rings true to my slightly more experienced ears of completing this Introduction to Instructional Technology course; a time-lapse of a mere three months since authoring this definition.

However, there is definitely much, much more to the field of Instructional Technology than my definition of the field alludes to. When I first wrote this definition, my only real awareness was to the fact that Instructional Technology was about finding methods and strategies for teaching and designing courses around those ideas and then measuring student performance and gaining feedback on the learning process in order to improve the learning process for the next cycle.

Since writing this definition, my outlook on the Instructional Technology has dramatically expanded to consider the educational and instructional field as a whole. This expansion includes how education is structured with regards to administration, funding, research, development, and teaching. There is an entire infrastructure that surrounds pairing up the teacher with the students and providing them with the means and ways of teaching. I am not entirely sure Instructional Technology should encompass this entire breadth of the educational field, but most of the writings in class do indeed tend to address the whole of the field and not just what goes on in the classrooms and the interaction between teachers, students and the technology employed in the instructional process.

As such, the more I delved into the readings and began to consider the issues, the more I realized that it is not the Instructional Technology on the level at which I originally developed my definition that has me the most concerned. The research and development currently going on in the field seems to be well targeted and is deriving some very interesting theories and new pedagogies worthy of being used in classrooms around the nation.

What has really come to my attention and has become one of my primary areas for consternation is the great harm the glamorous hype embodied and promoted in technology's name can cause to the entire educational system should commercial entities manage to sell their hypes and unfounded promises on a large scale. While it is my belief that commercial interests are needed for educational reform geared towards supporting superior pedagogy to become a widespread reality, one must tread these waters very carefully. Commercial involvement in an educational field that is pitting for-profit entities against an essentially non-profit socialist system is a two-edged sword. A sword that stands to bring about great benefits to the entire educational system if properly tapped and new technologies properly recognized and installed for the right reasons. However, it is all too easy to fall for the seductive and glamorous images companies paint of their product offerings and to, in effect, take the easy road to nowhere. This is a trap you do not see many successful businesses falling into because they are economically driven not to blunder on pure hype. On the flip side, you will definitely find many a company that has winked out of existence for falling for the glamorous side of technology as it appears to be common in the educational field today.

Whether it is up to Instructional Technologists to ensure the educational system takes the high road with technology or up to the administrative branch of the educational system to find the right CIOs and CTOs to implement technology at all levels intelligently remains to be seen. I firmly believe that the Instructional Technologists in the world are the best equipped to understand how technology can be used in classrooms and most certainly how it shouldn't be used.

The real question we must ask ourselves is whether Instructional Technologists will step up to the plate and into the key administrative roles necessary to ensure the right technology is put into the right hands and in the right places for the right reasons?

Quotes from Assigned Reading Materials

The following are excerpts from assigned reading materials that most struck me throughout my participation in EDIT 6100, Introduction to Instructional Technology. I believe that many of the "truths" embodied in the quotes below show themselves in tasks I have completed throughout this course and most especially in the answers provided on this final exam. The Proper Way to Become an Instructional Technologist

"I believe that the best of our field have learned that our theories and models must be grounded in the actual context of the problem."

"...in education, I prefer to take advantage of the opportunities that the available "power tools" afford, such as the computer. But underlying it all, is a profound core of, and respect for, the essential skills, strategies, and experiences akin to those possessed by the master carpenter."

"I also liked the way Feynman talked about his teaching in a very reflective, almost constructivistic way. That is, he seemed to understand that teaching was a way for him to understand problems in new and important ways."

"I can't name one technical skill I learned in a graduate course that I still use exactly as taught. Instead, all of the technical skills I now use were learned either on my own, through professional development, or by preparing to teach others (mostly the latter). In my opinion, universities are not supposed to prepare technicians to perform a specific job, but rather should prepare people for a life's study."

"Large investments in time and support for teachers are especially critical if the adoption of constructivist pedagogies accompany the infusion of media and technology. This is critical given that it is pedagogy that is most influential on learning, not media or technology. Media and technology, however, are integral to the implementation of innovative pedagogies."

"Following the maxim that the surest way to learn something is to teach it to others, the process of designing instructional materials enables instructional designers to understand content much more deeply than the students whose thinking will be constrained and controlled by the very materials they are developing (Jonassen, Wilson, Wang, & Grabinger, 1993). It follows that empowering learners to design and produce their own knowledge representations and educational communications can be a powerful learning experience."

"The fact that educational research is not highly valued by educational practitioners is widely recognized. A large part of the problem can be attributed to the fact that the interests of academics who conduct research and those of administrators, teachers, students, parents, and others involved in the educational enterprise are often quite different."

"the need for long-term, intensive research focused on the mission of improving teaching and learning through media and technology has never been greater. This research should be developmental in nature, i.e., focused on the invention and improvement of creative approaches to enhancing human communication, learning, and performance through the use of media and technology. The purpose of such research is to improve, not to prove."

"In recent years changes in universities, especially in North America, show that we have entered a new era in higher education, one which is rapidly drawing the halls of academe into the age of automation...such automation is often coercive in nature - being forced upon professors as well as students - with commercial interests in mind...It is not a progressive trend towards a new era at all, but a regressive trend, towards the rather old era of mass-production, standardization and purely commercial interests."

As the technology critic Neil Postman put it to a Harvard electronic-media conference, “I thought that television would be the last great technology that people would go into with their eyes closed. Now you have the computer.”

“The purpose of the schools is to,” as one teacher argues, “Teach carpentry, not hammer...We need to teach the whys and ways of the world. Tools come and tools go. Teaching our children tools limits their knowledge to these tools and hence limits their futures."

"The value of a specific model is determined within the context of use. Like any other instrument, a model assumes a specific intention of its user. A model should be judged by how it mediates the designer's intention, how well it can share a work load, and how effectively it shifts focus away from itself toward the object of the design activity."

"Teachers and administrators use computer and information technologies to improve their roles in the educational process."

"Technology has been shown to have positive effects on the instructional process, on basic and advanced skills. Technology is also changing the instructional process itself. To be effective, technology cannot exist in a vacuum, but must become part of the whole educational environment."

"Because many new technologies are interactive (Greenfield and Cocking, 1996), it is now easier to create environments in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback, and continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge"

"Many technologies function as scaffolds and tools to help students solve problems."

"Technology can make it easier for teachers to give students feedback about their thinking and for students to revise their work."

"Bringing students and teachers in contact with the broader community can enhance their learning"

"What has not yet been fully understood is that computer-based technologies can be powerful pedagogical tools--not just rich sources of information, but also extensions of human capabilities and contexts for social interactions supporting learning."

"Researchers have argued that technology has the potential to dramatically change the way in which our schools are structured--providing pressure to do away with the division of instructional time into small blocks and discrete disciplines and to rethink the way we use physical classrooms and teaching resources."

"I believe that systemic reform is not possible without utilizing the full power of high performance computing and communications to enhance the reshaping of schools."

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