Reflection of class on Jan.25^th

  In this chapter the author said that teaching technology as a curriculum is the wrong assumption, I really agree with his point here.

  Dr. Templar asked me a question in interview before I came here that “Do you know what is the educational technology?” To be honest, I didn’t know what the educational technology exactly was that day so I just answered the definition of educational technology given by AECT in 1994 that “Instructional Technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management and evaluation of processes and resources for learning.” This definition was accepted by most scholars in China.

  Actually, it’s an obsolete definition because learning process and supporting resources are just parts of an entire learning ecosystem. In other words, this definition ignores the initiative of individual student and over emphasizes the role of teacher in learning. You know, if these learning resources and process are designed just according to teachers’ teaching experience without considering students’ personalization and their previous knowledge structure, it won’t effective on promoting students’ learning at all.

  Unfortunately, our course setting is based on this definition, so I have to spend almost four years on learning how to use technologies to create learning resources and design learning process although I don’t know if projects I finished are suitable for students and if technology I learned is suitable for me because what I should do are regulated in curriculum plan.

  I think the objective of educational technology is not “Just do it”, it should be “Just find it and do it”.