A student (name withheld) sent me the following question:

Question

I want to continue to gain experience and possibly pursue a career in instructional technology sometime down the road. Is there any advice that you can give to me to help get me started?

Answer

Here are some things that have helped me to attain whatever level of understanding that I have about technology and learning:

  1. It’s only very rarely the technology that makes a difference. In a perfect world, there would be immersive experiential simulations that students could use to familiarize themselves with the content they want to learn. And once they have a baseline of understanding the factual relationships among the important factors that describe how the “experts” in that field understand the field (e.g. how physicists understand physics, or how mathemeticians understand math), then the nature of the simulations could change into ones that allow folks to “play” with their knowledge and structure new inquiries using their novice understanding. When they run into something that doesn’t make sense, THAT is when they turn to the expert and ask for an explanation.

  2. Now, technology seems to be a commodity, where volume is more important that learningful effectiveness (This has always been the way, as an aside; I made up the word “learningful” as I wrote this answer, but feel free to use it, if it suits a future purpose).

  3. Since there is very little that any individual can do to change 1 & 2, I would recommend getting on board with one of the educational / instructional technology concerns (e.g. Google or Microsoft or Apple or ???).

  4. Learn the foundations of applied learning theories (like SAMR or similar), because all of the groups that would fall under #3 will base their approaches on some amount of scholarship about learning effectiveness.

  5. To bring it back to #1, in my view, the only two things that a teacher can do is either make conditions right for learning, or devise a suitable way for the students to demonstrate proficiency. Technology can help with those parts. But, the learning (as connection building in the personal database of understandings) takes place INSIDE the learner. The way that a person solidifies their understanding may come from thinking, or writing it down, or talking it out, or participating in the activity, or some other means as yet undiscovered (e.g. interpretive dance). Technology MAY be helpful to mediate that.

TL/DR; Keep checking out new software that claims to help folks learn within your area, and see if any of it resonates with yourself or your students.

Comments?