Week 8 Blog

 History of IT

I am a student of history. I wasn’t a great student in High School, but I was in Honors history classes throughout my time in HS. I took many history courses in college as well, and my library is full of works on history as well as great biographies of influential people from history. I say all of this because this week seems to have been about … History.  I enjoyed it.

C Bonk’s article (Bonk, 2020) had a great takeaway, “fall in love with the problem, not the solution” (p1606). Solutions seem so transitory, and one “solution” might be replaced by a better one. One should never stop looking.

I think this is what I also enjoyed the Molenda Foundations article so much (Molenda, 2008). The conclusion was very thought provoking for me. “Since its inception, the field of educational communications and technology has been characterized by changes in technology and radical shifts in its underlying paradigms” (p18). With this understanding, Bonk’s premise takes on a daunting meaning in my mind. Imagine the not too far distant future, where educational technology, or learning systems design has become one of the medical sciences. Here educational neuroscientists design implants that make the most of artificial neural connections to teach individuals at the speed of the brain. Good bye film strips with a beeping cassette tape, my nemesis from elementary school. Hello to new solutions for an age old problem.

-Kevin

 

References:

Bonk, C. J., & Wiley, D. A. (2020). Preface: Reflections on the waves of emerging learning technologies. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(4), 1595-1612.

Molenda, M. (2008). Historical foundations. Handbook of research on educational communications and technology, 3, 3-20.

Comments

  1. ShannaOctober 12, 2021 at 6:35 AM

    Kevin,

    I, too, am intrigued from this quote from the Molenda article that you included in your blog post this week: “Since its inception, the field of educational communications and technology has been characterized by changes in technology and radical shifts in its underlying paradigms". During this course we have studied the history of educational technology, but I am also so intrigued by the future of educational technology. As we know, change is a constant within technology. And as the last year and a half has proven, advances in educational technology are frequently evolving and may become even more of a necessity to global changes like the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope that in future IST courses, we will learn more about future possibilities of educational technology. I am particularly interested in artificial intelligence, but as we have learned about educational technology - there are many future developments that we are not even aware of at this time!

    -Shanna Sanders

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 13, 2021 at 9:33 PM

    Kevin, great imagination as always. I think that we will be plugged in or connected to a wi-fi network to get our new skills that we desire. Imagine how much of a change that is from cassette tapes. I think I enjoyed listening to some of the interviews with the practitioners of the field. It gave me a better appreciation of the true dedication that these IST professionals have brought to the field. The interview with Dr. Reiser was compelling. His dedication to improving instructional practice is tireless. From creating learning models with fellow professors to writing chapters in books, he seems to always seek improvement in instruction. In his article, Dr. Reiser spoke about the effects of instructional media. He made an interesting point that the effect of the technology will eventually wear off and enthusiasm fades. It would seem that we have all this technology presenting information but not any instruction. To me this means that educational technology may be a temporary attention grabber that will need to become good instructional technology to promote effective learning.

    Ed

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  3. KeirstenOctober 23, 2021 at 12:19 PM

    Kevin,
    I also found the history of IT from this week interesting. It reminded me a lot of our readings from week one on the definition and history of the term. Not only is the history very interesting, where we are headed (the future) is also fascinating. You mention in the not too far distant future the changes we may see. I think that extended reality, both artificial intelligence and virtual reality, are going to have major impacts on instructional technology. However, I appreciated the thoughts in Bonk’s article about not getting so held up on the technology. Technology should be a piece of instructional technology, but we cannot lose the instruction in the technology.

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