This is a continuation of the theme contained in the posts: Training, Learning, and Design The Organization of Training, Learning, and Design “Design” is a word that is broadly applied in the vernacular. We can “design” many things, and the motivated among us will actually build whatever we design. In education, we use design to Read More
Category: Leadership
Old (Fordist) versus New (ICT)
I first encountered the terms “Fordist (old)” and “ICT (new)” in a 2006 article by Olumuyiwa Asaolu. Since then, I have seen the terms used in earlier works, and they are used to differentiate the nature of organizations and the work they do (and the workers and leaders they need). I summarized the differences in Read More
Situational Awareness in Instructional Design
64: Situational Awareness in Instructional Design As we think about the work of creating appropriate, proper, and reasonable educational technology, our decisions and actions are often biased by the perspective of our position. Educators are biased towards ease of use and effectiveness for teaching; technologists are biased towards reliable, robust, and secure computer systems. School Read More
Planning for Innovative Technology
In preparing a presentation for a upcoming conference, I found a theme that resonated with me and a few others who were reviewing my early drafts. Without delving into the details of the presentation, I will state the presentation focuses (in part) on the nature of school planning that leads to innovative practices being adopted; Read More
Two Types of Presentations
In my recent book Efficacious Technology Management, which I published under a Creative Commons license (you can find it here), I began a section with the paragraph: “Data” has been widely, but imprecisely, used in education for most of the 21st century. Data-driven educators make decisions based on information they have gathered about their students’ Read More
On the Need for Translators in #edtech
I am of the option, that effective educational technology must be appropriately, properly, and reasonably configured. I am also of the opinion that the individual who can make decisions in all three domains of educational technology is exceedingly rare. (Most who claim they can do it are mistaken.) Fundamentally, technology professionals and education professionals understand Read More
Four Prepositions Framing #edtech
60: Four Prepositions for EdTech When we think about computers and information technology (ICT), and the models that educators have developed to use ICT in classrooms, it seems we can capture the nature of students’ and teachers’ interaction with it with four prepositions. Each is described and illustrated in this post. Teaching about computers- When Read More
What the Tofflers Wrote About Rates of Change
In 2006, futurists Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler captured the relative speed of change throughout society with this scale: businesses appear to be adopting new information technologies and adapting to them at 100 miles per hour, with other organizations (such as professional organizations and non-governmental organizations) moving almost as quickly; families in the United States Read More
Frameworks Defined
61: Frameworks Defined A continuum can be created with educational scholars placed at one extreme and educators at the other; educational theory is placed on the extreme with scholars and models of instruction are placed on the extreme with practitioners. Between these two extremes, there exists a gap that must be filled if instruction is Read More
Putt’s Law & School IT
The situation regarding IT management in many schools is well-captured by the hypothetical (and sarcastic) Putt’s Law. According to Archibald Putt, “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand” (Putt, 2006, p. 7). Further, Putt articulated a corollary, Read More