trends in educational technology

Trends in Educational Technology

Dr. Brenda BannanAssociate Professor

Instructional Technology

Technology and Design

• Technology as catalyst for change• Design Thinking/Innovation• Teachers as designers• Current challenges in educational technology

Technology

• Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)– a “diverse set of technological tools and resources

used to communicate, and to create, disseminate, store, and manage information. These technologies include computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony.”

– http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ICT_in_Education/Definition_of_Terms

Design

• “Design is the conceptualization or realization of new things”

– (Royal College of Art on Design in General Education, 1979)

• “Design thinking is a fundamental means of inquiry by which man realizes and gives shapes to ideas…”

– (Rowe, 1987)

ICT or Educational Technology

• Has the potential to:– Access to information and instructional materials– Create, design and share new digital products– Collaborate locally, regionally and internationally– Participate in design, development and use of

digital resources– Innovate new solutions and teaching

interventions– Advance skills and knowledge toward reform

ICT Project Examples

One Laptop Per Child1) Across the developing world, education

systems need to change dramatically to prepare their children for the modern world

2) Children (and adults) learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process

3) Involved teachers, relevant content, and appropriate technology can facilitate both educational change and learning motivation

Challenges

• many educational projects fail because their grand plan missed the idea that solutions for improving education cannot be considered as one-for-all, or a simple matter of widespread distribution of content– Dr. Robert Kozma

ICT Project ExamplesProviding Computer Hardware/Laptops -May not be enough

More than access is needed-Support and training - Local involvement and infrastructure- How to marshal local and regional resources?

Teacher/Student Resources - Solutions for identified problems generated locally/regionally- Align with cultural and local requirements or needs

Trend: Design as Catalyst for Change

• Teacher as Designer– Design learning experiences with available resources

• Design at all Levels of Involvement:– lessons, curriculum, technology school programs,

educational initiatives, etc• Design and Technology as vehicle for:

– Investigation, learning, creation, innovation, change, design, development, implementation of new ideas

Trend: Design as a Catalyst for Change• Investigation of learning content, problem, phenomena• Empathetic understanding and analysis

– students, teachers, community, context, activity• Participation/community involvement

– “grass roots” identification of problems• Generation of design/solution/intervention/lesson

– Bottom-up and top-down creativity to solve problems• Trials, analysis and learning from design/solution• Revision of design intervention

– Applied to lesson, curriculum, school-wide interventions, infrastructure

• Re-trial, analysis and learning continued

Emphasis on Design with Technology

• Design thinking as a catalyst for innovation and social changeChange by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Design Thinking in Education provides a powerful alternative to traditional educational models by challenging students to find answers to complex and difficult problems that have multiple viable solutions and by fostering students’ ability to act as change agents

Human-centered design

Himachali students visit local preschools, discover lack of basicteaching aids, develop creative, low cost solutions

Students concerned about the quality of education in local preschools visited 7 schools, interviewed staff and observed classes; Alarmed by the scarcity of resources, they take action in and organize entire school to design and create teaching aids for toddlers;Students return to teach students and share their inventions,; 112 students impacted; Lasting connection formed with between schools

-Day Star School Manali, Himachal Pradesh ,India

Source: Stanford University Design for Giving Competition, d.school

DESIGN FOR GIVING 2009. . . FEEL, IMAGINE, DO!Stories of Change from the top twenty

Trend: Design for Change

•Start small, study your market, pilot

•Conduct local analysis of problems, not just country wide deployment

- Bottom up and top down

•Aim for long-term education/ collaboration for local teachers

•Aim for sustainability of the local schools.

Source: http://www.olpcnews.com/

Peruvian Examples of Design Thinking for Change

“get real impressions and real feedback from teachers, and to start researching, designing, promoting infrastructure implementation initiatives, to get towns connected to the web, with DIY wireless data links, training people to pull wires and install access points, etc...”

“ideas, actions and volunteerism is highly appreciated and welcome! Whoever would like to visit the escuelab, or come to test a project, or plan to organize an internship /volunteering program related to culture and technology”

Source: http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/peru/olpc_peru_far_from_goals.html

Trend: Design Thinking for Change• Feel, imagine, do

– Children in India promote change in their communities through human-centered design

• Hear, create, deliver– Teacher/Children participate in design thinking for social

change• Analyze, design, develop/implement

– Teacher Instructional design • Informed exploration, enactment, local/broad impact

– Researchers - Educational Design Research promote educational change using ICT

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/whatidiscover/innovation-through-design-thinking

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/whatidiscover/innovation-through-design-thinking

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/whatidiscover/innovation-through-design-thinking

Observe and Engage:

Problem framing:

Generate ideas:

Prototype solutions:

Test intervention:

Iterate and revise:

Trend: Technology and Design Thinking In the U.S. we need to study the use of these new technology tools to better understand how their new capabilities are impacting the formal and informal education of our children. We can do this through design thinking and user research.

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/skytland/digital-natives-2747490

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/skytland/digital-natives-2747490

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/skytland/digital-natives-2747490

‘Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach (Marc Prensky, 2001)

Learning Technologies and Design Thinking for Change

• Has the potential to:– Engage children in authentic learning– Collaborate locally, regionally and internationally– Visualize and model scientific phenomenon– Work toward solving complex, real world problems in

the context of school subjects– Engage children in learning games, creative generation

and simulations– Augment reality with layering of digital content over

the real world

Authentic Learning

Disruptive Technologies

Creating a learning community

Social media/Informal Learning

Social Media/Formal or Informal Learning

Multiple Media/Formal Learning

Visualization Tools

Visualization Tools

Simulations

Games - Informal Learning

Mobile Learning:

45

Best Uses of m-Learning

“Today, organizations use variations of m-Learning for performance support, review or reinforcement, knowledge acquisition, coaching or mentoring, receipt of updates, data collection, audio and/or video instruction, and decision support.” - eLearning Guild M-Learning 360 report.

Performance Support

Review/reinforcement

Knowledge acquisition

Coaching/mentoring

updatesData collection

Audio/video

instr

uction

Decision support

mLearning – Phone apps

Mobile Learning - mLearning

• Uses Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS) to attach items/characters to a physical location•Attach barcodes to objects/places that link to game content•Add story•ARIS – Mobile Media Learning Experience•Developed by University of Wisconsin’s Games Learning and Society Group

Location-based mLearning Games

Outbreak @ MIT• Augmentative reality game

Augmentative Reality

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MIT Labs – Environmental Detectives• http://education.mit.edu/ar/ed.html

Tech Info:- Windows Mobile based- Delivered on PDA/Mobile phone

Augmented reality simulation with location-aware devices, teaching environmental responsibility

Trend: Future technology?

ICT, Design Thinking and Learning Benefits• Benefits:

– Actively engaging students in challenging tasks• Interactive and engaging capabilities of ICT, real world tasks and simulations

– Focusing on individual learners’ skills and needs• Create meaning through creation of multimedia products/ visualization tools

– Providing students with structure and support• Teacher modeling, student display, and teacher monitoring complex cognitive skills with

support when needed – Presenting frequent assessment and feedback

• Individualized, peer or teacher/mentor assessment and feedback– Creating a supportive learning community

• Collaboration, joint projects, building on each other’s knowledge– Connecting with the outside community and resources

• Involving parents, community members– Building on current language skills and developing new ones

• Digital audio/video build comprehension and decoding skillsKozma, R. & Wagner, D. (2006)

Design Thinking and Technology

• Combination - powerful change agent– Empathy, understanding of use/users of technology– Investigation of context and content– Participation in design, creation of learning experiences– Analyze increasing democratic and mobile learning – Understand blurring of informal/formal learning,

integrated into students daily lives– Users (students) generating learning content– Expand boundaries of social, physical and contextual

awareness

Design and the Creative Class

“Design is about doing things consciously and not because they have always been done in a certain way”

Margaret Bruce, Companion to Creativity (2009)

Creativity

Design Innovation

How can you leverage design thinking and existing technology to create change?

Thank you!

Dr. Brenda BannanGeorge Mason University

Fairfax, VA U.S.A.bbannan@gmu.edu

References Kozma, R. & Wagner, D. (2006). Reaching the most disadvantaged with ICT:

What works? In R. Sweet and D. Wagner (Eds.), ICT in non-formal and adult education: Supporting out-of-school youth and adults. Paris: OECD.

Learning Light e-Learning Centre (Mobile & Wireless Learning Projects)http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/Resources/mlearning.htmEducause Review Going Nomadic: Mobile Learning in Higher Educationhttp://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0451.asp?bhcp=1Glasgow Caledonian University: Mobile Learning Exampleshttp://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0451.asp?bhcp=1Futurelab Report 11: Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learninghttp://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/reviews/reviews_11_and12/11_02.htmLearning with Mobile Devices: Conference Proceedingshttp://www.lsda.org.uk/files/pdf/1440.pdf