Page 37 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

24 1 Introduction to Educational Technology
text-based resource into a visual form. In other cases, it may require the inclusion of
support for discussion forums and chat rooms. In still other cases, support may
require the collection and analysis of learner actions and inputs. In a general way,
educational technologists need to understand what teachers, students, and support
personnel do in order to provide appropriate tools and technologies to help make
them more effective and productive in their various activities. An interesting
in-class or online activity or discussion could involve a response to these questions:
(a) What kinds of learning experiences exist? (b) Who are involved in supporting
learning? (c) What kinds of things can be done using technology to support all those
involved in learning, performance, and instructional activities?

1.3.5 Media and Representation Formats

Along with the explosion of resources available on the Internet have come a wide
variety of representation formats. As the educational technology timeline suggests,
text, pictures, audio, and video occurred were dominant in the nineteenth century
and first half of the twentieth century. Within each of those media categories, there
were a variety of types, such as black and white photographs, graphs along with
text, and so on. With the advent of computing and the Internet, the ways and means
of representing knowledge resources grew dramatically. Perhaps, a dramatic way to
represent the rich variety of representation formats is with the painted scroll from
the Song dynasty called “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” attributed
to Zhang Zeduan circa 1100 CE (see The China Online Museum located at http://
www.comuseum.com/painting/famous-chinese-paintings/along-the-river-during-the-
qingming-festival/). The Web site shows a progression of replicas of the original
scroll that was more than 5 m in length, culminating with an electronic animated 3D
version that is more than 150 m in length and put on display in 2010 at the
Shanghai Expo.

1.4 Educational Technology Perspectives

As previously referenced, the work by Hartley and colleagues (2010) on developing
a curriculum for the broad domain of advanced learning technologies resulted in
important foundation work pertaining to understanding the knowledge, skills, and
competencies required of educational technologies. Their work involved numerous
surveys of professionals and academics, a detailed review of the research and
practice literature, interviews, and focus group discussions over a three-year period.
Because the goal was to create a curriculum framework, it was deemed appropriate
to adopt a competency framework. As results were compiled, five clusters of related
competencies emerged: