Defining Instructional Technology

I found the first chapter in the book very interesting as I observed how the definitions of instructional technology have evolved over time.  I considered my personal experiences in education and they seemed to align very accurately with the different definitions presented in these chapters.  Considering that I have been involved in the education system for close to thirty years as either a student or an educator, I have experienced a changing view of educational technology and am excited about how it is reshaping the educational system and opening doors for both teachers and students alike.  

I would define educational technology as the use of different technologies to enable teachers and students to retrieve information, organize it, and communicate their findings in various ways.  This seems like a very simplistic definition but I believe that educational technology encompasses so many facets of the use of technology in education that I believe it is necessary to leave room so as not to restrict the types of technology used or how they are used.  I have seen how schools have separated technology and learning such as when I was a student in the 90’s.  We wrote research papers using only books as sources and used computers for their word processing ability.  We took keyboarding and that was our experience in the computer lab.  As I continued in school we slowly started incorporating the Internet into our studies using them for research to add to these research papers.  In college, we created power points, and relied more heavily on the Internet as sources of information.  Today in my classroom we use technology for many aspects of learning.  We communicate with other classrooms and professionals around the world, we go on virtual field trips and are able to explore landmarks, zoos, and geographical wonders of the world, and we chat together and have book discussions using virtual classrooms.  We are able to play educational games that build reading and math skills, we take surveys, we watch videos of plants blooming, and we are able to travel back in time to colonial villages and see what life was like for colonial children.  As a teacher I keep my attendance, gradebook, phone logs and lesson plans online.  Technology is interwoven into my curriculum and way of life in the classroom.  It is no longer about what technology I use, but how technology empowers our learning.  It is the means we use to accomplish our objectives in the classroom.

I really enjoyed reading about the six characteristics of instructional design.  I found these to be good guidelines to use during planning of lessons or activities.  I chose to examine a cross curricular lesson I did in my language arts class that incorporated social studies.  We did a unit on the states where each student was required to choose a state and do a research unit on that state.  As a class we decided on some of the important facts we wanted to learn about our states.  Students then conducted their research involving a virtual field trip to an important landmark in that state.  Each student was required to complete a presentation on their state and the information found.  I then had the entire 5^th grade take a “road trip” around looking at the different projects completing a scavenger hunt with information from the different states.  This was a good lesson, however after looking at the characteristics of instructional design, I believe I could tweak it to make it much more effective.

I think that this lesson was student centered in that each student was responsible for gathering the information about his or her state.  I think it could be improved by forming groups of students and having them work together by choosing a state (in the previous lesson I had them draw their states out of a hat).  After they chose the state I would have them choose roles that they would each take in this project.  One might design the presentation, one might record information gathered, one might come up with the wording they would use, etc.  I would have these groups create presentations designed to have the class guess what state they were exploring.  The product would be crucial because the rest of the class would depend on the accuracy to correctly guess their destination.  These presentations would be easy to assess based on whether the rest of the class could determine what state they were talking about.  I believe that this would include participation from others, thus designing a lesson that followed the characteristics of instructional design more closely.  

I can understand why Reiger chooses to separate the teacher, textbook and chalkboard from “instructional media” in this chapter as it explores the history of instructional media and how it has been adapted into the classroom.  I would consider these the constants that will remain in some form or fashion throughout the past, present and future of education.  I do not believe that it matters whether the teacher is writing on blackboard, elmo, interactive whiteboard, etc.  What matters is that the teacher will be writing.  I believe that whether there is a teacher live or online, there will still be a person guiding and evaluating the learning.  Whether the textbooks are tangible or comprised of videos online, students will still be using something to gather information.  So, I do not necessarily think it is important to classify these as instructional media.  I do think that they are necessary in the instructional design process.  You could have all the technology offered but if a teacher does not incorporate it into lessons, it sits in boxes in classrooms and goes unused.  This is where I think it is absolutely necessary to involve teachers into the instructional design definition.  I believe the purpose of instructional design is to design lessons in a way that all students are able to learn to the best of their abilities.  This would include differentiation and I believe technology is so useful in creating lessons to meet a variety of needs.  So I absolutely agree that instructional media should be included in instructional design, however I do not think this is the purpose.  The purpose should be to accomplish the learning objective.  Instructional media should be a means to that end.