Page 21 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

8 1 Introduction to Educational Technology
• The more time a person spends on a learning task, the more likely that person is
to master the task.
• Providing timely and informative feedback while a learner is engaged in a
learning task is likely to facilitate mastery of the task.

These principles are integrated throughout this book and will hopefully become
second nature to you as an educational technologist. In addition, it is well estab-
lished that prior learning is generally predictive of future learning—that is to say,
that learners who have struggled with a subject in the past are likely to continue to
struggle. This implies that being aware of a learner’s prior experiences and per-
formance can help an instructor develop appropriate learning activities for that
learner. Moreover, technology can play a key role in helping an instructor develop
personalized and individually appropriate learning activities, as will be discussed in
a later chapter.

1.1.5 Defining Educational Technology

The term “educational technology” is widely used within the education profession
as well as in the general population. It might seem like there is no need for a
definition of such a commonly used term. However, such an assumption might be
made for the everyday use of the term “philosophy” and many other terms that
identify areas of scholarly pursuit. As it happens in most of those cases, the various
professional and scholarly communities have provided a specificdefinition of the
term as a way to clarify the aims and scope of the discipline. In this case, we begin
with the definition provided by the Association for Educational Communications
and Technology (see www.aect.org): “the study and ethical practice of facilitating
learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate
technological processes and resources” (Januszewski & Molenda, 2008, p. 1).
In elaboration of the AECT definition, we note that designing, adapting, cus-
tomizing, implementing, testing, deploying, and evaluating resources, activities,
and learning and instructional tools intended to facilitate learning, performance, and
instruction are included within the scope of the discipline. In addition, we
emphasize the notion of practice in the definition for two reasons. First, it is directly
aligned with the basic Greek derivation of the first term, techné, involving the
notion of skill. Second, throughout this volume there will be an emphasis on the
effective use of a technology to support or facilitate learning, performance, and
instruction. That notion aligns particularly with the second term, logos, involving
the notion of reason. In ordinary terms, one might then say that educational tech-
nology involves the reasoned and effective use of technology to support or facilitate
learning, performance, and instruction.
For the instructor: Ask, for examples, of educational technologies and then ask
how an example satisfies or fits the definition above.
The popular use of “technology” is in reference to physical things or things that
one can touch, see, hear, taste, or smell. In computer science, the term “technology”