Quentin's e-Portfolio
ETEC 511: FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
ETEC 511 was my first MET course. It was, as it were, going from “survival” cooking to cooking on my own for real. I had some good ideas of what I wanted out of the program and I was ready to take them to the next level. Like cooking, I thought I knew what I was doing, but I did need to hone some specific skills.
This course introduced me to the foundations for understanding and rationalizing my own throughts and perspectives surrounding educational technology.
Overall, this course began an ongoing discussion with my MET colleagues and my school colleagues about the need for effective integration of technology. Reading through articles such as Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message provided a lot of ideas and consideration into thinking through the rationale behind the technologies I was choosing to use with my classes. Overall, I began to become increasingly convinced that using something for the sake of simply using it or because it was new was not an appropriate educational decision. Pedagogy must inform our technological decisions.
Artifact 1: Theorizing Educational Technology
One of the initial assignment we did was creating an interesting and witty comic regarding an issue in education. I came into this program with a lot of ideas and concerns about the use of e-texts. This assignment allowed me to look at the issue of e-texts and provide a snapshot via the comic as well as some beginning thoughts on the problematic use of e-texts in classrooms.
The comic illustrates just a few of the issues with e-texts and how many teachers adopt a new technology without understanding its full benefits or possibilities. As such, the optimal benefits are missed and the students only gain fringe benefits (i.e. a smaller lighter textbook).
I have also included the write up explaining the rationale behind this comic in more detail.
Artifact 2: Research Paper - Instructional Design and Electronic Textbooks
As I continued to think through the issue of e-texts, I decided to make this the focus of my scholarly essay for this course. I jumped at the opportunity and was nearly overwhelmed at the research that was out there. This research into the design aspects of e-texts was eye-opening to me. I saw that e-texts were being informed more by the available technology rather than the appropriate pedagogy (McFall, 2005; Schwartz, 2012).
Going over the pertinent research I discovered some key ideas for the effective use for e-texts. The most appealing functions of e-texts are that it facilitates annotation, collaboration, and note sharing between instructors and students and among students (Schwartz, 2012). The collaborative benefits of e-texts cannot be overemphasized. For some instructors this may require a significant pedagogical shift. For others, it may mean envisioning collaboration on a larger scale. Within e-texts, there is the ability for collaborative note taking, among other annotation tools, and group highlighting (Murray & Perez, 2011). Maximizing collaborative learning will allow an instructor to benefit from reader participation to create a nearly flawless e-text (Wasshuber). Moreover, e-texts need to be differently designed than print texts. Because students tend to skim e-texts and do not read at the same rate as when reading printed texts, students will need an e-text that is well laid out (Appleton, 2005). One implication of this is for designers to write shorter paragraphs in simpler sentences (Fitz, 1990). Moreover, the e-text design should utilize alternative presentation methods such as graphs and pictures (Fitz, 1990).
Overall, using e-texts in an effective manner requires a pedagogical shift from course instructors and textbook manufacturers. As I look at using e-texts for some of my courses, I am sad to say that we are still a long ways away from launching maximal efficacy in this realm. There are design and platform issues as I discovered in ETEC 510 with actually designing a usable e-text.
Overall, I think this is an issue that is still relevant and so I am planning to look at this issue further. Finally, as I reflect on my research from this initial course, I believe that it is still relevant to the discussion that needs to be had within the overall classroom pedagogy in the 21st century. In many ways, we are missing some foundational skills both within the textbook companies and within the education system. It is like we are cooking with only a few of the available tools.
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