Page 77 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

66 4 Systems Perspective of Educational Technology
4. Create a concept map depicting an educational technology system that involves
designing, developing, and deploying a system to support secondary school
teachers in creating interactive games for specific learning goals in various
science subjects. You can assume others are responsible for the design and
development. Your task is to depict the larger context in which such a system is
likely to be used. Be sure to indicate the major components of the system and
the dynamic interactions likely to occur over time. The concept map should be
contained on one page and include annotations to indicate the components and
their interactions.

4.1 Introduction to Systems

Austrian biologist Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) is known as one of the
founders of general system theory that was published in 1968. According to Ber-
talanffy, a system is defined as a set of elements standing in interrelation among
themselves and within an environment (Bertalanffy, 1968). Peter Michael Senge
(born 1947) is an American system scientist and the founder of the Society for
Organizational Learning. Senge is known as the author of the book The Fifth
Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, which focuses on
group problem solving using the system-thinking methods in order to convert
companies into learning organizations.
Systems are pervasive in the natural world (e.g., the solar system, the nervous
system, various ecological systems, etc.) as well as in things created by people (e.g.,
a governmental system, a school system, a library system, etc.). In short, we live in
and interact with systems every day in many different ways. The focus of this
chapter is on systems involving education and technology, of which there are many
and likely to be many more in the future.
A system is a combination of more than two interacting and interconnected
elements which function as an organic or integrated or coordinated whole. There are
three main aspects of a system (Huang, Sha, & Peng, 2006):
(1) A system consists of two or more elements. Systems are pervasive. Many
objects and processes involve systems.
(2) A system is more than a collection of elements and includes how the elements
are connected and how they interact over time. Systems change over time.
Change and development of each system occurs in the exchange of material,
energy, and information, which can benefit the dynamic stability and openness
of these systems simultaneously.
(3) A system is a kind of bounded whole that is situated in a particular envi-
ronment or context, with input coming from the environment and outputs
going back to the environment. Systems exist in an environment. Each system