Reflection On Technology And Education

Technology and education change at a lightning pace. Daily, there are new or revised tools, resources, curricula, and more that merge the two into one and seek to be the next best thing. As the technology changes, the one constant needs to be strong pedagogy and practices rooted in good teaching. Theories of learning have been around for decades. Educators must constantly reexamine their philosophies on teaching as well as what learning theories ground their practice. Those theories will ultimately be the compass that directs them into how they teach and integrate technology into their practice. The goal of the following paper is to examine my teaching beliefs and philosophies as related to educational technology. The constructivist

From early models of design and learning theories such as Behaviorism to theories such as constructivism and connectivism, there is the basic assumption these will end in learning taking place. The following two sections will look at constructivism and connectivism in more depth and set the foundation for my current beliefs on instructional practices and the use of technology as an educational technologist. From this foundation, a focus will be placed on classroom teaching and two key areas of focus for an educational technologist: universal design and professional

Information processing focuses on learning from the outside in. In constructivism, the learner constructs knowledge as they “actively impose organization and meaning on the surrounding environment” RD 40. They actively attempt to create meaning. The learning theory started to gain popularity in the 1940’s with Piaget. Lev Vygotsky was also a major influence and contributed to an iteration called social constructivism. Social constructivism emphasizes that learning is collaborative in nature. Taken together, constructivism and social constructivism focus on student-centered instructional strategies, active collaborative learning, and increased student engagement (Sivec 8). Proponents of constructivism focus on the active role learners can take in discovery and learning in meaningful contexts. Those against these principles focus more on the need to teach to the test, as well as how constructivist principles may not be best for all learners. In a 2010 study, Overbay, Patterson, Vasu, and Grable focus on the increased belief in constructivist principles and how that relates to classroom technology and it’s ever increasing presence in the classroom. In an authentic constructivist environment, they assert that technology should be “utilized in such a way that it engages students and pushes them to make deeper connections with the material under study, to generate meaning, rather than