Educational Technology Notes

Course Outline (HNS 301)

  • Introduction to educational technology.
  • Nature, meaning, and scope of instructional technology.
  • Instructional communication.
  • Systems theory and its contribution to instruction.
  • Educational aims, goals, and objectives.
  • Instructional objectives.
  • Planning for teaching.
  • Teaching strategies and methods.
  • Range of media for teaching and learning.
  • Design, selection, and use of instructional media.
  • Use of community resources in teaching and learning.

Introduction to Educational Technology

  • The world is dynamic with increasing technological innovations.
  • Life has changed significantly due to science and technology.
  • These changes impact all spheres of human life, including education.

Evolution of Educational Technology

  • Educational Technology involves:
    • Analyzing
    • Designing
    • Developing
    • Implementing
    • Evaluating the instructional environment, learning materials, learners, and the learning process to improve teaching and learning.
  • Early human history:
    • Writing was unknown.
    • Teachers mainly used oral teaching methods.
    • Students relied on memorization.
    • Socrates' oral dialogue system exemplifies relevant technology in teaching-learning at the time.
  • Advent of writing:
    • Various communication materials emerged (leaves, tree trunks, metals, rocks).
    • Paper and ink provided a breakthrough in writing technology for teaching and learning.
    • This led to the use of printed subject matter and textbooks.
  • Use of writing and printing technology:
    • Instructional materials like chalkboards, pictures, charts, models, maps, diagrams were utilized.
  • Industrial development and technical advancement:
    • Sophisticated scientific instruments, mass media, and educational materials were introduced.
    • Use of hardware and software like radio, television, tape recorders, films, transparencies in education.
  • Modern classrooms:
    • Digital Classrooms: use computers, tablets, internet, and educational software to enhance learning.
    • Smart Classrooms: technology-enhanced integrating computers, specialized software, audience response technology, assistive listening devices, networking, and audio/visual capabilities.
    • Online Learning: Education that takes place over the Internet.
    • E-learning: education based on modern communication methods including computers, networks, audio-visual materials, search engines, electronic libraries, and websites, whether in the classroom or at a distance.

Meaning of Educational Technology

  • Educational Technology is a field in the theory of education dealing with the development and application of educational resources.
  • Technology implies the application of science to art.
  • It's a new area in education developed in recent years.
  • Applying the science of learning and communication to teaching evokes technology.
  • Educational Technology is concerned with the development, application, and evaluation of systems, techniques, and aids to improve human learning.
  • It is a science of techniques, methods, and media to realize educational goals.
  • Educational Technology defined:
    • Systematic application of scientific knowledge to practical tasks in Education.
    • Communication process resulting from adapting the scientific method to the behavioral science of teaching/learning.
    • A means and service to effect and facilitate better learning systems.
    • A field in the theory of education dealing with the development and application of educational resources.

Tenets of Educational Technology

  1. Based on scientific and technological advancements.
  2. More a practical discipline and less theoretical.
  3. Dynamic - a fast-growing modern discipline.
  4. Uses research findings from psychology, sociology, engineering, and sciences in education.
  5. Brings students, teachers, and technical means together effectively.
  6. Science of techniques and methods - identifies problems, remedies them, and aims at improving the education system.

Objectives of Educational Technology

  • Provides valuable help in the teaching/learning process to achieve the best results.
  • Uses available human and non-human resources.
  1. To identify educational needs and aspirations of learners.
  2. To determine the aims of education, broad strategies, and structure.
  3. To develop a suitable curriculum with the interaction of science, art, and human values.
  4. To identify man-made material resources and strategies for achieving aims.
  5. To develop models leading to improvement of teaching and learning.
  6. To develop appropriate aids and equipment for educational purposes.
  7. To identify major constraints in the environment and tackle them.
  8. To help in extending educational opportunities to the masses.
  9. To manage the entire educational system covering planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Scope of Educational Technology

  • Concerned with all variables, phases, levels, and aspects of the teaching-learning process.
  1. Analyzing the teaching-learning process:
    • Concept of teaching
    • Analysis of the teaching process
    • Variables of teaching
    • Phase of teaching (planning, interactive, application, etc.)
    • Levels of teaching (memory, understanding, reflective)
    • Theories of teaching (Formal, Descriptive, Normative)
    • Principles and maxims of teaching (universal facts found by teachers based on experience)
    • Concept of learning
    • Relevance of learning theories
    • Relationship between teaching and learning
  2. Identifying Educational Goals or Objectives:
    • Identification of education needs and community aspirations
    • Survey of resources available to satisfy needs
  3. Development of Curriculum:
    • Designing a suitable curriculum to achieve educational objectives.
  4. Development of Teaching-Learning Materials:
    • Producing suitable teaching-learning materials considering objectives, curriculum design, and resources.
  5. Teaching preparation or teaching training:
    • Preparing teachers to exercise complex responsibilities.
  6. Development and selection of teaching-learning strategies:
    • Selecting and developing suitable strategies and tactics of teaching.
  7. Development, selection, and use of appropriate Audio-Visual Aids:
    • Discusses various types of audio-visual aids for education.
    • Focus on proper selection suitable for specific teaching-learning situations.
  8. Effective utilization of hardware and mass Media:
    • Using instruments, equipment, gadgets, and communication devices to attain educational objectives.
    • Helping teachers and learners play their roles.
  9. Providing essential feedback and control through evaluation:
    • Planning and devising tools for continuous evaluation of the teaching-learning activities.

Advantages of Educational Technology

  1. Individualized Instruction:
    • Enables the use of self-instructional programs.
  2. Improvement in The Quality of Teaching:
    • Using varied, rich, and motivational programs like TV and other media.
  3. Encourages development of new teaching methods:
    • Using podcasts, blogs, and social media.
    • Web conferencing and online communication tools for working with groups or individuals.
    • Podcast: A multimedia digital file distributed over the Internet for watching and listening on a computer, iPod, or other device.
    • Blog: A website where someone regularly records their thoughts, experiences, or talks about a subject.
    • Social Media: Means of interactions among people to create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.
      • Social media platforms allow users to have conversations, share information and create web content.
      • Forms of social media: blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds.
    • Web Conferencing: Technologies that enable real-time collaboration between multiple devices.
      • A web conferencing platform lets participants use their mobile devices, laptops, or personal computers (PCs) to join a single digital location.
      • Examples: Skype, Google Hangouts, AnyMeeting, MeetingBurner, Join.me, and Zoom.
  4. Meeting the Problem of Mass Education:
    • Using programs developed by experts for a large population of students with computers and TV.
  5. Equalizing Educational Opportunity:
    • Making efforts for equalizing educational opportunity irrespective of economic, social, and geographical status.
  6. Providing Continuing Education:
    • TV lessons and self-instructional material to help learners and in-service personnel stay updated.
  7. Prepares Students for The Future:
    • Preparing students for a digital and technology-focused future.
  8. Lowering Textbook and Tuition Prices:
    • Decreasing cost of textbooks with increased accessibility of resources.
    • Converting textbooks into digital format.

Forms of Educational Technology

  • Wide range of scope and applicability.
  1. Teaching technology
  2. Instructional technology
  3. Behavioral technology
  4. Instructional design technology

Teaching Technology

  • Systematization of the teaching process.
  • Teacher plays the role of a technician.
  • Teaching should be a technology known and practiced well.
  • Teachers must have technological skills and subject matter mastery.
  • Teaching is a scientific process with content, communication, and feedback.
  • Teaching technology process includes the philosophy and acts of teaching.
  • The teacher must imbibe the art and techniques of this technology.
  • Four steps systematically prescribe the contents of teaching technology:
    • Planning of teaching
    • Organization of teaching
    • Learning of teaching
    • Controlling of teaching

Instructional Technology

  • Helping the instructor and learner in the desired instructional task.
  • Refers to the realization of the stipulated instructional objectives in a particular teaching-learning situation.
  • Instructional stands for a certain type of command meant for getting:
    • Some specific information
    • Knowledge
    • Understanding about a thing, a system, or a process.
  • Instructional technology:
    1. Plans what type of instruction and material are needed.
    2. Suggests ways to utilize instructional material for realizing instructional objectives.
  • Instructional technology defined:
    • A subsystem of educational technology that helps the instructor or learner in self-learning to determine:
      • Media
      • Methods
      • Material, for realization of instructional objectives.

Behavioural Technology

  • May be utilized to study and bring modification in the behaviour of all living organisms.
  • May include behavior modification strategies not based on learning principles.
  • Task almost synonymous with behavioural analysis and modification through:
    • Operant conditioning (shaping desired behaviour)
    • Observational learning (imitation of a model behaviour)

Instructional Design Technology

  • Instruction helps the individual learner achieve a suitable teaching-learning situation.
  • Good instruction is goal-oriented, implying:
    • Well-conceived
    • Planned
    • Effectively controlled.
  • Instructional design stands for a plan describing how an instruction process should be carried out for objective attainment.
  • It's a design with a clear motive, helping the learner and teacher attain instructional objectives.

Technology in Education and Technology of Education

  • Technology in education refers to the use of technological advancements such as:
    • Equipment
    • Materials
    • Machines for educational purposes.
  • Invokes audio-visual equipment, hardware, and electronic devices like projectors, films, radio, televisions, tape recorders, recording machines, and computer-aided instructions.
  • Technology in education is a service concept.
  • Educational technology can provide services to teachers:
    1. Explaining the purpose and functions of different appliances, equipment, audio-visual material, and mass media.
    2. Providing training and acquiring the material.
    3. Handling the equipment to overcome their reluctance to use new media and materials.

Technology of Education

  • Cannot limit itself to the role of service.
  • Does not represent something added or helped from outside.
  • Signifies a technological approach to educational problems.
  • Deals with systematic application of scientific knowledge of the processes of learning.

Approaches of Educational Technology

  • Three main approaches:
    1. Hardware approach
    2. Software approach
    3. System approach
  • Hardware and Software approaches play a vital role in Educational Technology.

Hardware Approach

  • Origin in Physical Sciences and Applied Engineering.
  • Based on the concept of Service.
  • Adopts a Product-oriented Approach.
  • Concerned with the production and utilization of audio-visual aid materials such as:
    • Charts, models, slides, filmstrips, audio cassettes, etc.
    • Instruments and gadgets (radio, television, films, projectors, tape-recorders, video player, teaching machines, computers, etc.) and mass media.
  • Hardware Technology uses products of Software Technology.
  • Potential to hand over educational benefits to the mass with ease and economy.
  • Too much use may mechanize the teaching-learning process.

Software Approach

  • Referred to as Teaching Technology, Instructional Technology, or Behavior Technology.
  • Origin in Behavioral Sciences and Psychology of learning.
  • A Process-oriented Approach.
  • Utilizes the knowledge of the Psychology of Learning to produce learning material, teaching–learning strategies, etc.
  • Does not provide direct services to its users.
  • Helps in the production of various Software materials for developing and using the hardware appliances.
  • Includes:
    • Teaching strategies
    • Learning material
    • Evaluation tools
    • Teaching models
    • Programmed instruction, etc.
  • Software technology does not require aid from hardware technology for delivery.
  • Becomes more useful when assisted by Hardware Technology.
  • Does not have mass appeal and is costlier in the long run, compared to Hardware technology.