Assignment:
Review the Tweets from around 9 PM on Wednesday 9/12/18 for what I’d like you to reflect on for the blog. Check the #LTEC6010 to find it.

“Reflect heavily on how technology impacts communications and what the consequences are.”

Response:

The twitter/tweets session on September 12 was quite interesting. This technology is new to me.  I had opened my account in Jan/Feb 2018. I only used the account a handful of times for class. With this class, LTEC 6010, this is the first time that I have tweeted with so many inputs. My impression of the class was that it was hard to follow and I was more focused on how to respond to the questions instead of understanding the discussion. I felt that it was a free for all.

I tried to answer about 4 of the posted questions. Since I am a novice to Twitter, I found it hard to get my bearings an navigate around the site. If I had more hands on experience with Twitter, the responses may have been more substantive. I think that if there were 2 questions versus 5 the discussion would have been more focused. I do have to admit that I don’t use social media (Twitter, Facebook, …) at all, except that I do IM at work only on occasion. Most of the time I am working in one or more applications of Microsoft Office and many times I miss seeing that I have received a message until hours later.

My primary form of communication is usually through emails and phone calls. Sometimes it is frustrating using some of the applications, because it takes more effort to type out each of my responses.  I usually can cover more ground in a conversation when talking on the phone or face-to-face. I can get all of the information I need through a phone call than through typing. Many times, right in the middle of typing a message, I stop and realize that I’m not productive enough as it takes a lot more effort to sending short typed messages. When I get frustrated I call the person I have been sending text or emails to, and I call them to complete the conversation.

Technology has accelerated our communication skills, but sometimes I think that it can be very distracting. This in-turn causes me to constantly refocus on the typing communication process and thus taking my attention away from the job at hand. This situation impacts both the job productivity as well as the staccato messages back and forth. I don’t think that I would see much improvement even though I significantly increase my typing speed.

Each of these interruptions, emails or IMs, require that I stop focusing on what I’m working on and re-focusing on the communication stream. This is that back and forth staccato activity. Not everyone can consistently and effectively multitask with consistent success. One or the other tasks will suffer after a short while. So in many ways all of the conveniences afforded by the new technologies can and do cause divided focus and can result in being less effective and productive. However, some of my opinion is a result of me not being exposed to these many new technologies in my early childhood. I have been slowly acquiring the necessary skills to use the different applications as I need them in my daily life.

Assignment:

This week I want you to write out your philosophy of the world and learning in particular. What is? What can we know? How can we know it? How do people learn? What is your evidence? Is it anecdotal from your experience and others or research-based? Effectively, what is your personal theory of teaching and learning? Next week, you’ll extend that to include your personal philosophy and theory of how and why to integrate technology into teaching and learning processes.

Response:

My personal philosophy of the world is one of an evolving nature. As I look back on my life I think that it has changed many times. Through childhood and adolescence, it was based on influences of the family, what I was taught and studied in school, and my interactions with friends. I think much of my maturing occurred while I was in the military, where during a regimented life I was able to discover what my talents and skills were. After serving in the military, I met my wife which was a challenge to my philosophy of the world at that time. Now I was responsible to/for another person. When we had children, I the shift in my philosophy took a significant turn as now it was my responsibility to provide for the family – financially, socially, and security.  In addition to the focus of my career, my spiritual growth and church life provided a significant underpinning in my overall world philosophy. I think that through the various stages of my life, there were many instances that the challenges refined and reshaped an matured my philosophy of life.

The basis for knowing about my world philosophy is when I compare my current life’s experiences with what I have learned throughout my life. This comparison process is where I look at what is occurring (experiencing every day), and comparing that experience with what I know. It’s these ongoing comparisons that either support of refute my current beliefs, so there is this constant course correction process.

My philosophy of the world is still a work in progress. I think that the human activities associated with action and behavior fit well with my world philosophy. Here “mere behavior is what happens inside our bodies and actions are what we do” (Rosenberg, 2016, p. 35). Albeit social science does not focus on behavior as much as on human activity, both of these aspects are interdependent factors. I liken the common sense theory, where “it is a theory we use every day to form our expectations about the behavior of others and to explain to others our own behavior (Rosenberg, 2016, p. 36).

My world philosophy approach related to teaching and learning flows form the sum total of what I have learned and experienced in life. Since I have been studying the different aspects of Learning Technologies for both my Master’s and Ph.D. degrees, I currently focus on a particular philosophical approach. I have a non-positivist and constructivist view/approach to my teaching and learning pursuits. Much of my teaching and learning has focused on engineering and technical content. Since I work in an industrial environment, I have a focus to improve the overall effectiveness of the learner’s outcomes as demonstrated on the job.

I have taught electronics courses for over twelve years. Electronics is primarily a mathematics focused discipline, as all of electronics is theoretically modeled and problems solved using mathematical equations. While I was teaching these courses, I would redirect and refine how I taught the class in order to improve the student outcomes.  Now that I work in a production environment, I focus on using these concepts and skills across different disciplines (electrical, mechanical, finishes, computing, and data analytics).

Reference

Rosenberg, A, (2016). Philosophy of Social Science, Westview Press, Boulder Colorado

The front end of the article authored by M Eraut, entitled “Educational technology: Conceptual frameworks and historical development” (Eraut, 1994), was somewhat confusing for me in that the introduction and early history was hard to follow. There are many new names and concepts introduced in this article that I have not heard of before this course. The front end of the article serves as an ‘introductory survey course’. It would be great to have an overall introduction to the field of instructional design and learning technologies at the beginning of the Master’s degree program. After taking Masters and Ph.D. courses I have been introduced to some of these founders. My overall impression is that the author, M Eraut, should have expanded this article into a textbook so that he could have expanded on the content.

In the ‘Early Developments’ section the author identifies an issue that I wrestle with in my own research endeavors. Here he identifies “communication theorists have shown that there is a limit to the amount of information that can be received and processed at any one time” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1884). What was identified then in 1994 is much more relevant today. With the growth of new technologies, knowledge, and data content there are significant demands on the individual to keep up with the cognitive load. The article focuses on the transition from audio/visual technologies of the late 20^th century into the yet to be discovered impact of the exponential growth of the digital/computer age.

Eraut’s identified a primary argument of James Finn that while “many areas of North American society are being transformed by technology, but it is inevitable that education would eventually undergo a similar transformation” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1884). To that predictive point, education is still catching up to the transformation. Much of the content of the article is informational, touching on various concepts with the associated definitions. The concepts are presented in relation to expanding the landscape related to the growth of educational technologies. No data analysis is presented in association with the exploration of educational technologies.

As the author addresses the ‘systems approach’ he discusses the relationships related to a systems engineering approach which is identified as “a set of principles, a scheme, method” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1886). The concepts of engineering, as many define it, typically refer to science, electrical, mechanical, chemistry, and biology. There is an interchange of man, machine, ideas, procedures, and management. All of these concepts relate to technology where “the central problem of education is not learning, but the management of learning” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1887).

There is this gray zone where education technologies cozy up to those other engineering professions. Much of “systems engineering (operations research) found its success in military and aerospace sectors as well as many applications in industry” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1887). Educational technologies have a significant challenge to transition into the engineering sector. The author defines aspects of engineering, but does not fully develop how instructional technologies equate to an engineering discipline. Instructional technology like educational technology and related to systems engineering is a “systematic way of designing, carrying out, and evaluating the total process of learning and teaching in terms of specific objectives based on research in human learning and communication” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1889).

The author’s contention is that “educational technology has been, often justifiably, accused of being a solution in search of a problem” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1892). In relation to education technology’s association with an engineering discipline, there is uncertainty about the systems approach to the educational discipline. I don’t see where the author fully addresses these concerns so as to justify educational technologies being associated with an engineering discipline. I suggest that an approach that is supportive of the positivist paradigm is a good place to start by incorporating experimental, quasi-experimental, and direct observation methods of research analysis. However, much of the current research focuses on a non-positivist approach where the research focus is on subjectivity and relative properties.

The author discusses the need to “work toward future needs, where societies are increasingly looking to their education systems to develop independence and collaboration, and the appropriate use of learning resources” (Eraut, 1994, p. 1896). The concept of developing effective educational technologies is not fully defined in this article. The concepts are presented without providing a specific path forward to meet these goals, hence the earlier contention still stands that education needs to reinvent its capabilities and its technological effectiveness. One thing is certain, change takes time and persistence.

This article is salvageable in that there is a lot of historical and informational details. With the introduction of many concepts and research contributors, the overall article would be best served if it were expanded or a more focused in its presentation. This assessment would impact the literature review and its overall structure. The author should have provided a separate and detail conclusion in order to restate the key points and focus of the article.

Reference:

Eraut, M., (1994). Educational technology: Conceptual frameworks and historical development. The international encyclopedia of education, 2, 1882-1899.