Personal Beliefs and Assumptions about Educational Technology

1. The Technology itself (A Tool to get work done)

a. Technology changes quickly

- New and experienced teachers will regularly come into contact with technology that they have no experience with.

- It is helpful if teachers are open to potential experts within their classrooms. (Students may come with unique skills)

- We should not assume young teachers have more skills with technology.

- We need to develop strategies for teacher learning and sharing of ideas of innovative uses, as they become available e.g. professional learning networks, twitter.

b. Technology has a ubiquitous presence

- At what point do we stop talking about past technology (the over head projector). When do we either take it for granted or cast it aside? Is this cause for needless expense?

c. Technology can hold information for us to collect when wanted

d. Emphasis needs to be placed on good tasks, not the technology that serves them (Papert, constructionism)

- Technologies may extent and expand human capacity.

- Technology may shorten the path to efficiency but placing too much emphasis on efficiency will lead to pressure for teachers to master the tool and not the job that needs doing. (Feenberg) http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/komaba.htm

Not just a tool to get work done, but also the place where we meet to do it. We can be connected in and with technology (Actor Network Theory). http://www.learning-theories.com/actor-network-theory-ant.html

2. Technology may Connect us (Not just a tool but a ‘place’)

a. A means through which we might relate and participate with the world (Digital Citizen)

b. Digital technology enables us to have a ‘presence’ even at a distance

- Personally I believe the best learning happens in a face to face, hands on, I need to know learning situation, but I recognize that good learning can still happen at a distance made possible by digital technology.

c. We can tell our stories and have feedback from others without physically being there (YouTube)

d. With collaborative technology students can meet to co-create, explore and work on a common task (Google Groups)

- In this ‘place’ teachers can begin to be concerned with creating learning environments that connects student’s questions to a world full of meaning.

We cannot understand technology merely looking at how it functions or by separating it from the experience of using it.

3. The Experience of using Technology in teaching and learning

a. Learning is contextual (constructivism)

- Technology should be introduced and explored in context

- Vygotsky, Piaget, Dewey, Rorty, Bruner

b. There are unintended consequences (Not a neutral tool)

- Both good and bad and everything in between. We need to be aware and responsive when needed, but being afraid is not helpful for innovation.

c. A professional literacy and skill is required for teachers

- General home experience with technology is not sufficient for the classroom.

- Developing a professional literacy is a personal, complex process. One size does not fit all.

- Teachers are busy people they need professional time to expand all of their teaching skills, including technology.

- Placing expertise (Help Desk off site) too far away is frustrating for teachers and leads to reluctance of use.

d. Learning is social

- We do not live in a vacuum we make sense of what we learn by telling stories about it.

e. Tacit knowledge is critical and difficult to express in text (Experiential Learning)

- We convert the lessons learned in experience into practical knowledge for future use (Dewey)

f. Lived Knowledge is a temporal affair (Dewey)

- The tools of technology will come and go. We should not get stuck or distracted by them.

g. Integration critical, not an add on subject

- We are talking about the need to integrate technology by connecting it in multiple ways to a curriculum and personal inquiry at an appropriate grade level, skill level and subject. (Connectivism) http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=116

- Need drives learning, the choice of ‘tools’ we use to support learning need to be readily accessible to support what we want to know when we want to know it.

h. Good teaching and learning needs to be the focus

- Technology should be in the background. We should not neglect the nature of knowledge in educational technology.

- We should shift the emphasis from what are the barriers for teachers to integrate technology to what are the barriers for teachers developing philosophical thinking about the nature of knowledge in educational technology.

Much of education reform seems to be connected to the idea of ‘teacher proofing’. It is the idea that a teacher can be given laptops but not given administration of them. It sends the message that teachers are not competent professionals and the experts are better able to make decisions about technology. If we want teachers to use technology for exploration we need to open a place for them to explore and permission to think of themselves as explorers. We do not make it easy for students by making it difficult for teachers!

4. School Reform and Change Assumptions

a. Change needs to come from a teacher enabling, reflective participation (Willis, Schön)

- Teachers are the key agents for change in the knowledge society (Hargreaves)

- Change needs to be more than correctly implementing a plan developed by someone else (personalization, differentiation)

b. Site based

- Solutions are not universal

c. Collaborative and Emergent vision

- Don’t begin with the end in mind

d. Theory should not be separate from practice

- Teacher’s questions tend to be of a practical nature.

e. Technology should not be thought of as a catalyst for change

- We cannot assume technology has an autonomous power to change teacher’s philosophy of knowledge.

The work on this blog post reflects my many experiences as a technology lead teacher, student and my doctoral candidacy exam. My memories were awakened after reading the following:

Willis, J. (2001). Foundational assumptions for information technology and teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, [Online serial] , 1 (3) . Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss3/editorials/article1.htm

Philosophy of Technology: Tool?

I have just received my candidacy questions. The following is my first attempt to write about what my philosophy of technology is in response to one of them. Have you taken the time to write about yours yet? I hope this might get you thinking:
My task today is to construct my own story of understanding and share it with you in the hopes that it might echo with your own story of experience. To do this as Ihde (2004) explains, we need to not just ‘study’ philosophy but to also ‘do’ philosophy. It is more than compiling facts into bits and pieces. We need to think deeply and organize these bits critically for ourselves, then we need to talk to each other so we can reorganize the new bits.
So as I begin to unpack the philosophy of technology as it is packaged for me, at first I see a paradox or a double edge sword. It is common to hear people speak of hope and possibilities with technology while others speak of danger and warnings. The good or bad uses of technology. As John Dewey points out, “Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites” (1938, p. 17). Yet initially most of us see technology as a neutral tool to extend human capacity. Simplistically we believe that it is a means to end human suffering. If the technology isn’t working it is because we need to get better at using it. We should not question the technocrats because they know more than us.
I wonder If I am going to discuss technology from the standpoint of a tool I need to go deeper into my philosophy of technology, my philosophy of teaching and learning, as well as my philosophy of educational technology.
Before I began my doctoral studies I never thought much about philosophy, let alone my philosophy of technology. Even with a masters degree in Educational Technology I largely took for granted my philosophy of all things technological. My thinking at the time was that philosophy was a subject, something people paid money to study at university. My philosophy of technology was something either invisible or just out of focus for me. I never felt capable or even invited to do so nor did I have a place to do it.
To begin, is technology in the classroom a tool? Is it an applied science? Is it a system of correlated means and ends? For that matter can we call it a place? At first glance the term tool implies a neutrality. Meaning that technology is simply a human invention that may be used in good or bad ways. But who must take responsibility in how it is used, maintained, and repaired when broken? Are the tools of technology really separate from us and what we value? Using and choosing technology for a purpose is a specific value choice in itself is it not. I do not believe we can understand technology by looking at how it functions.
If it is an applied science then it is a human activity. This might also indicate a neutrality. Is technology something we go out and do?
If it is a system then we can think of it as a pattern. Patterns do not exist in isolation. Hardware can hardly function without it’s human, and humans must learn how to operate the hardware. Are people and their technology not connected in a system somehow? Do we learn from technology, learn with technology or learn in technology? What is it we mean when we say as teachers we want to create a learning environment?
Perhaps it is a little of all of these things, the use of technology given the choice of how to use it becomes more than just a means ‘to’ an end. Rather it becomes a means through which we might relate and participate with the world. I write this blog you might respond. In this case technology may be thought of as a place. Feenberg (1999) and Franklin (1999) have used the metaphor of a house, “The house is not a devise but an extremely rich and meaningful life environment” (p. xi). In our houses we have many tools that we use to help us enjoy life and connect to each other. The tools of technology have built a structure around us. He continues, “That the real world of technology is a network, not a system, but a network that encompasses a system within it” (2008, p. 22).
I believe philosophy is a personal way of thinking about and acting in the world that we wonder about. For that matter it is something we are all capable of doing to some extent. I think that it is important the I participant with my philosophy as I come to understand it, as nothing really seems to become visible until we take the time to intentionally interact with it. I am drawn to this wonder in the hope of creating wisdom. So for this purpose I wish to use the expression “go native”(Ihde, 2004, p. 91) with my philosophy of technology to become an informed participant in a more global (wide angle) discussion of it.
I believe all teachers have a philosophy of technology but not many have taken the time or been given the space to think deeply about how and why they use technology in their classrooms and personal life. Often they are told they just have to. It shows up in how they allow their students to interact with technology and the language they use.
More will follow in the coming days...

References:
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY, USA: Kappa Delta Pi.

Dusek, V. (2006). Philosophy of technology: An introduction. London: Blackwell. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=Iy7o0tPVMJgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=val+dusek&source=bl&ots=72KdashwIt&sig=vod7OVgSE78zE5pSEkaw_D3uFb4&hl=en&ei=T-yHTPqtI5OesQPRyoygCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Feist, R., Beauvais, C., & Shukla, R. (2010). Technology and the changing face of humanity. Ottawa, Ontario: University of Ottawa Press.

Franklin, U. M. (1999). The real world of technology. CBC Massey Lectures (2004th ed.). Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc.

Ihde, D. (2004). Philosophy of technology. In P. Kemp (Ed.), World and Worldhood (pp. 91-108). Printed in the Netherlands: Springer.