It triggered my thoughts about the question that what the technology means to education after I read A Critical Look at Educational Technology from a Distance Education Perspective by Terry Anderson. Dr. Anderson demonstrated his critical thoughts from a distance education, a common and classic education perspective. It inspired me a lot on the influences from digital technologies upon the traditional on-campus education.
Dr. Anderson said the majority of the educational experience is mediated by some forms of technology. What aroused me from this statement is: Does the technology influence the overall instructional effect or efficiency or the person who uses the certain technology? I voted for the latter one. We indeed saw the more and more sophisticated and advanced technologies in line with the generation development of pedagogy of distance education. Hence the application of technology is inevitable for distance education, especially on the break of the limitation of time and physical distance. Distance education also makes it possible to carry on the online education on a massive scale. We can see the technology makes the education better. However, why there are some broken promises and unmet goals in the reality, as Dr. Anderson mentioned about five elements. For example, the higher attrition rates in distance education showed most learners have low degree of participation. As far as I am concern, the most prominent problem lies in the interaction, no matter between students and teachers, or students and students. Distance education is born with this bug, which needs all the instructional employers try to deal with. Also, learners should be guided to realize this distraction problem and then learn the ways to overcome it. Therefore, I think it is not the technology be blamed for the problems, but the people including instructional designers or all participants should be responsible for improving the quality of distance education.
I learned the history and development of technology for four generations from this article and thanks to the power of technology. I noticed the word “technological determinism” from Kirkwood, which was a critical opinion when comes to the distance education application. However, I disagree with this statement for that technology is just a trigger to revolutionize the education. The effect from technology depends on how the people employs it. The technology cannot determine the education development, but assist the education to promote its effects or efficiencies. When a new technology emerges, we should not firstly consider how it can apply in education, but what the education needs to be improved. Then we choose the most suitable technology to deal with the problems in instruction. Hence, educational technology is technology-oriented education, rather than education-oriented education.
Hi, Xiaoying,
I am a beneficiary of online education. When I first started learning English, my city did not have good educational resources or I needed to pay very expensive tuition. Then I turned to the online education market. I use the Internet to collect learning resources or find native speakers to practice English. Because I want to learn English well and pay less, the Internet and online education provide me with a good platform. As an educator now, I also hope to bring efficient and helpful learning resources to others.
Siyuan Liu
Hi, Xiaoying.
I agree with you that distance learning is lacking interaction. For example, some people prefer not to show video in the meeting via Zoom. If there's a better way to have the interaction between the people who are having distance learning, it would be more beneficial for all the participants.
I also agree with you that technology can not determine education development but assist education to promote its effects or efficiencies. There are plenty of fancies, high-tech tools we can use in the education field. But what needs the most may be some better instructional system designs. Additionally, how to identify the problem for the learners and help them to solve it would be more important.
Sungling