1.1.

2: Perspectives That Define

Perspective 1: Educational Technology as Communications Media

This perspective grew out of the audiovisual (AV) movement in the 1930s when higher education
instructors proposed that media such as slides and films delivered information in more concrete and
therefore more effective ways than did lectures and books. This movement built upon educational
research and practices focused on how to design and use messages optimally in audiovisual
communications for teaching and learning. The view of educational technology as delivery media has
dominated areas of education and the communications industry.

Perspective 2: Educational Technology as Instructional Systems and Instructional Design

This view originated with post-World War II military and industrial trainers who were faced with
preparing large numbers of personnel quickly. Based on efficiency studies and learning theories from

educational psychology, these trainers advocated using more planned, systematic approaches to
developing uniform, effective materials and training procedures. Their view was based on the belief
that both human (teachers) and nonhuman (media) resources could be part of an efficient system
for addressing any instructional need. Therefore, they equated “educational technology” with
“educational problem solutions.” This perspective has evolved into human performance technology
, a systematic approach to improving human productivity and competence by using strategies for
solving problems.

Perspective 3: Educational Technology as Vocational Training

Also known as technology education , this perspective originated with industry trainers and
vocational educators in the 1980s. They believed that (1) an important function of school learning is
to prepare students for the world of work in which they will use technology and (2) vocational
training can incorporate practical means of teaching all content areas,such as math, science, and
language. This view brought about a major paradigm shift in vocational training in K–12 schools away
from industrial arts curricula centered in woodworking/metals and graphics/printing shops toward
technology education courses taught in labs equipped with technology stations such as graphics
production, robotics systems, and computer-aided design (CAD) software, a program used by
architects and others to aid in the design of structures such as houses and cars.

Perspective 4: Educational Technology as Computer Systems (A.K.A. Educational and Instructional

Computing)

This view began in the 1950s with the advent of computers and gained momentum when they began
to be used instructionally in the 1960s. As computers began to transform business and industry
practices, both trainers and teachers began to see that computers also had the potential to aid
instruction. From the time computers came into classrooms in the 1960s until about 1990, this
perspective was known as educational computing and encompassed both instructional and
administrative support applications.
At first, programmers and systems analysts created all applications. But by the 1970s, many
educators involved with media, AV communications, and instructional systems also were researching
and developing computer applications. By the 1990s, educators began to see computers as part of a
combination of technology resources, including media, instructional systems, and computer-based
support systems. At that point, educational computing became known as educational technology.

Perspective 5: Educational Technology as Learning Sciences

In 1970s and 1980s, new understandings about how people learn influenced the emergence of the
learning sciences in the early 1990s. Researchers found that knowledge was more than recalling
facts but also included developing skills and deep conceptual knowledge, which can be learned and
represented differently by individuals. Learning processes involved building instruction around what
learners already knew with relevant and authentic topics that are meaningful to learners and
provided scaffolding, which is assistance from experts that can include peer learners, technological
guidance, and teachers. Researchers acknowledged that learning can occur individually or with
others and is influenced by the context in which it occurs (e.g., in a math classroom, during after
school playtime) and by culture.

Working from these understandings, learning scientists tend to be interventionists who build
technology-based learning environments that anchor curricular content within authentic, real, and
simulated problems with a goal to transform teaching and learning. For example, students learned
persuasive writing by becoming a protagonist and avatar in a videogame called Plague: Modern
Prometheus. They collected evidence within the videogame environment and wrote letters to
convince in-game characters of their position on specific approaches to curing the plague (Barab,
Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012). Learning science is very multidisciplinary, often involving
ideas from psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and computer science. Learning
scientists, often working in teams including practitioners such as teachers, conduct design-based
research to investigate how people think and know, how learning processes function, and how to
design learning environments to support learning. This research is done in applied contexts, such as
schools or libraries, and repeated many times as the researchers use their research to improve and
re-examine subsequent redesigned interventions.

Integrating Educational Technology

Each of these five perspectives on technology in education has contributed to the current body of
knowledge about processes and resources to address educational needs.

Educational processes include a set of three knowledge areas through which to consider the role of
technological resources, including (1) learning theories based on the sciences of human behavior, (2)
pedagogical or instructional practices that complement learning theories, and (3) curriculum
standards or content knowledge that inform our learning objectives or goals.

Technology resources in this textbook are viewed as technology tools (e.g., media, software, and
hardware) and technology support and expertise. We choose the term resource to capture the idea
that there exists a generous supply of technological tools, support, or expertise available that can be
accessed and used when needed. A technology tool is a device such as a clicker or software
application such as a word processor or Twitter that accomplishes a specific task.
Educational technology refers to resources leveraged to support the educational processes involved
in teaching and learning.

Integrating educational technology refers to an individual or collaborative process of (1) identifying

problems of practice (POPs) (e.g., learners’ needs or misconceptions, lack of curricular materials,
difficult teaching topics), (2) identifying technological resources as possible solutions, (3) using the
resources as educational technology in the learning environment, and (4) assessing whether the
educational technology solves the target POP in ways that replace, amplify, or transform teaching
and learning.

Software Applications in Schools

Schools carry out many types of activities in addition to teaching, and software has been designed to
support each of these. Application (app) software refers to any program specifically designed to run
on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Productivity—Software designed to help teachers and students plan, develop materials,

communicate, collaborate, and keep records. These include word processing, spreadsheet, database,
and email programs as well as a variety of other materials generators and data collection/analysis,
graphics, and research and reference tools. These programs do not have curricular material built into
them.

Instructional—Software designed to teach skills or information through demonstrations, examples,

explanations, and problem solving. Functions of this software include drill and practice, tutorials,
simulations, games, and problem-based and personalized learning. These programs include
sequenced curricular material built into them.

Administrative—Software that administrators, teachers, students, and parents use to support

record keeping and information exchange. These include student records, such as grades,
attendance, individualized education plans, and other private data. Sometimes schools use student
information software (SIS) to maintain this information.

Era 4: The Mobile Technologies, Social Media, and Open Access Era

This era began in the early 2000s when portable devices such as smartphones and tablets made
Internet access and computer power more ubiquitous. As more and more individuals made texting
and social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, part of their everyday lives,
this constant connectedness transformed educational practice. The ease of access to online
resources and communications drove several movements.

Distance learning—A dramatic increase in the number and type of distance learning offerings came
about first in higher education and then in K–12 schools. Electronic books (e-books or e-texts)—
Texts in digital form on computers, e-book readers, and cell phones became increasingly popular
alternatives to printed texts. Some school districts eschewed book adoptions in favor of allowing
educators to choose their digital materials.
Open access—In 2000, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty started a bold initiative
to gather all course materials for the school’s curriculum and make them freely available online. The
initiative, OpenCourseWare (OCW) , launched in 2001 and still draws millions of visits by educators,
students, and self-learners each month. Around 2008, open-access university offerings called
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) became available. They allowed anyone anywhere in the
world to participate in college courses for free. By 2011, MOOC projects at MIT, Harvard, and
Stanford popularized the concept, and MOOCs came into common use in other colleges, universities,
and several startup companies. Some MOOCs that held proprietary content or were fee-based were
not truly “open ,” which means that anyone can join and participate for free and modify, remix, and
reuse the content with appropriate attribution and without fees for others’ use.

Mobile access—One-to-one laptop programs (and later tablet programs) as well as Bring Your Own
Device (or Technology, BYOD or BYOT) programs allowed students to use their own handheld
devices for learning activities and accelerated the move to bring computer and Internet access into
all classrooms.

As ubiquitous communications and social networking defined social practices in modern life,
educators struggled to create appropriate policies and uses that could take advantage of this new
power while minimizing its risks and problems.

Era 5: The Personalized, Adaptive Learning Era

Recent advancements in technology capabilities have led to a resurgence in developing personalized,

adaptive learning enabled through technology. Personalized instruction is tailored to varying
learning goals and content, instructional approaches, and pacing to match learners’ needs and
interests.

With more access to technologies, more learners are using a myriad of online or digital learning
resources. Information about how learners use these resources can be collected, stored, and
analyzed. Often the learner data generated are referred to as big data because these environments
can record every click of a mouse; thus, the amount of collected data can be immense. Learning
analytics are analysis techniques performed on educationally relevant big data to identify patterns in
learning that inform or optimize assessment, instruction, learning, and design of digital learning
resources. From this, innovators are building new instructional and administrative platforms that use
machine learning , a type of artificial intelligence, to predict and anticipate the content and
instruction needed to support learners’ progress. Harnessing this power makes software adaptive
because as the learner engages in activities, the software offers a range of options to meet the
learner’s predicted needs. For example, Knewton is an adaptive learning platform that can be
incorporated into new software and digital content products to collect big data, analyze learning,
and predict and offer learning pathways. Much of the current adaptive innovations being built are
similar to yet more powerful than CAI and CMI were during Era 1. These current technical
advancements are driving several educational innovations.

Adaptive Learning Technologies

Software and online environments adapt to learners’ needs through sophisticated analysis of learner
behaviors and interactions with resources or content. This software will adapt immediately by
changing content, activities, and assessments for the learner. Most textbook publishers and app
developers are building adaptive technology into their new products. For example, Dreambox
Learning is an adaptive math software with game-based elements. In many cases, a data dashboard
is available for the teacher and school leaders and sometimes for the learner and parent. Teachers
can use the dashboard to examine individual student progress and provide further interventions as
needed. School leaders can use dashboards to discover needs across groups of students (e.g., English
learners, students in special education, those in racial minorities, and those in poverty).

Personalized Learning

Whereas personalized instruction can be achieved without technology, current emphasis on it

capitalizes on technology’s affordances for varied instruction, assessment, and learning artifacts as
well as for collection and analysis of student data. Optimally, characteristics of personalized
instruction include (1) an academic learner profile, (2) learner-controlled learning path(s) with goals,
(3) frequent formative assessment and progression determined by learner competency, and (4)
robust teacher and school-based supports. The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) and
organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have special projects to increase
personalized learning in PK–12 schools.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Content Standards

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are grade-level standards stating the knowledge and skills
that K–12 students should learn in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) and literacy.

ISTE Standards for Students and Educators.

The 2016 ISTE Standards for Students (ISTE, 2016) are considered a framework to be used with
other standards to amplify or transform learning. The seven student standards emphasize learners
as (1) empowered learners, (2) digital citizens, (3) knowledge constructors, (4) innovative designers,
(5) computational thinkers, (6) creative communicators, and (7) global collaborators.

The Partnership for 21st-Century Learning Framework

The Partnership for 21st-Century Learning Framework (P21) advocates the importance of all
students developing 21st-century skills to ensure success in college and careers. The P21 framework
for 21st-century learning identifies four interconnected areas of student outcomes that contribute to
preparing a 21st-century learner. These outcomes include academic content knowledge, such as
English language arts, mathematics and other subject areas, and interdisciplinary perspectives, such
as global awareness; financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy; civic literacy; health
literacy; and environmental literacy. The second outcome is the development of learning and
innovation skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills, a set
that is often referred to as the 4Cs. The third set of outcomes includes information, media, and
technology skills, such as literacies to evaluate, use and manage information; analyze and create
media; and apply technology effectively. The final outcomes include life and career skills, such as
flexibility, initiative, social and cross-cultural skills, and leadership.
The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework

Today's Essential Conditions That Shape Technology

Integration

To integrate technology successfully into their teaching, educators must recognize that
teaching occurs within a myriad of contexts from the classroom to cities, states, and nations.
Political
Technical
Social
Equity and Culture

Legal and Ethical Issues

Emerging Trends in Technological Resources
Visions of the future are suffused with images of technologies that may seem magical and
far fetched now, just as wearable technologies such as an Apple Watch seemed only a few
years ago. We know that future education will mirror current technical trends and shape the
goals and priorities we set today for tomorrow’s education. As with so many “miraculous”
technologies, the question is how we will take advantage of their capabilities to bring about
the future education systems that our society wants and our economy needs.

1.5.1: Trends in Hardware and Software Innovation Part 1

Trend 1: Increased E-Book and E-Text Presence

Although e-texts have been available for decades, their technical sophistication has recently
increased dramatically. They are rapidly replacing paper books as the dominant medium for
accessing information. Publishers of textbooks are quickly generating digital content options
for schools. The student in the accompanying photograph is reading an e-book. E-book
reading via mobile device

Trend 2: Increased Sources of Open Content

Open-source materials are created to be shared, adapted, and used by others without fees
but with required attribution to the creator of the materials. Some open content is created
in small modular formats that allow flexible incorporation into learning experiences. This
trend also means the availability of more free content that can be adapted for K–12
teachers and students.

Trend 3: Ubiquitous Mobile Computing

The trend toward mobile devices in education is already widespread and having a great
impact on K–12 education. The portability of tablet devices facilitates instant off/on,
ubiquitous Internet access, rapid communication, and access to e-texts. A thriving app
development movement for tablets is driving this trend and increasing the options they
enable. Cloud-based storage and communications also enable this trend. Some schools
allow students who already own personal technology devices to use them in classes,
creating a BYOD/BYOT environment. Then these schools invest in mobile devices only for
students who don’t have them. Concerns about curriculum, privacy, classroom
management, and uniform access abound. In the Coachella Valley Unified School District in
California, many students live in rural sections of the district where the local cable company
would not install fiber optic cables to support Internet access. The district outfitted their
school buses with solar-powered Wi-Fi and parked many of the buses overnight near the
Internet-poor zones to maximize students’ use of mobile technologies.

Trend 4: Robotics
Affordable hardware, such as Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, and some 3D scanners, have enabled
more schools to adopt a robotic engineering curriculum to support learning in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for K–12 students as an after-school
extracurricular activity or as part of a STEM discipline. Students engage in a range of
activities from computer programming, using robot controllers, switches, sensors, motors,
and LEGO kits to design, build, and program robots— often for competitions. For Inspiration
and Recognition of Science & Technology (FIRST) is a nonprofit organization that offers
LEGO-based robotics programs and competitions for children ages 6–14 who research
real-world scientific problem and offer prototypes of innovative solutions. NASA also
supports robotics education through the Robotics Education Project (REP). It provides a list
of curriculum, competitions, and internships appropriate to K–5, 6–8, and 9–12 grade levels
and higher education. Research and development activities at Carnegie Mellon University
include building tools and curriculum for robotics classrooms that engage learners beyond
basic skills toward sophisticated computational thinking (Shoop, Flot, Friez, Schunn, &
Witherspoon, 2015).

Trend 5: Learning Analytics

Educators are also paying increased attention to learning analytics , or the ability to detect
trends and patterns from sets of performance data (a.k.a. “big data”) across large numbers
of students. The goal is to find ways to apply findings across students to create a
personalized approach to learning for each student.

Trend 6: Augmented Reality Systems

Coined by a Boeing researcher in 1990, augmented reality (AR) refers to a combined

hardware and software platform that creates a computer generated environment in which a
real-life scene is overlaid with information that enhances our uses of it. Examples have been
evident in industry, military, and entertainment environments for years, and now versions
of these systems are available to schools on mobile devices. For example, one teacher used
an augmented reality app called Aurasma to let students hover their tablets over images of
famous paintings, thus calling up audio and text with features and notes about the artist’s
techniques. Other augmented reality apps include Layar, used to enhance print materials,
and colAR, which works with coloring book pages. The National Science Foundation has
funded a project in which students engage in (AR) with their mobile devices to inquire into
local historical sites in the present day and in different time periods and from different
social perspectives. Another project, EcoMOBILE, allows students to examine ecological
aspects of a local pond using phones and AR technology.

Trend 7: Wearable Technologies

In combination with augmented reality, a trend noted previously involves wearable
technologies such as Google Glass and smart watches that are anticipated to impact
education as new applications come on the market. Mineer (2014) cites predictions that
BYOD will segue into wear your own device, or WYOD. She describes one teacher’s uses of
Google Glass to record lectures as she gives them and lets students record their progress
on projects they are completing. Wearables such as AiQ’s “smart textiles,” which monitor
the wearer’s vital signs, and Recon Instruments’ sports goggles or FitBit wristbands, which
monitor movements, have great potential for health- and sports-related areas. Another
project provides head-mounted displays (HMD) to children who are deaf so they can
quickly move from watching a person signing (in the HMD) to observing scientific
phenomena in real time. Other wearable products track location data, offering the potential
for improving student safety in school settings.

Trend 8: Gesture-Based Computing

Devices that we can control by moving a hand or other body part are changing the way
people interact with computers. With gesturerecognition systems , a camera or sensor
reads body movements and communicates them to a computer, which processes the
gestures as commands and uses them to control devices or displays. Gesture-based
technology, especially in combination with wearable technologies, has the potential to
enhance teaching simulations by making them more lifelike and intuitive to use.

1.5.3: Educational Trends Leveraging Technology Innovations

Hardware and software developers are capitalizing on the ever expanding computing power
of computers and high-speed Internet to create a range of resources that can be harnessed
to transform the educational system. More and more, people expect to work, learn, and
study whenever and wherever they want to, and they seek instructional resources that are
responsive to their personal needs.

Trend 1: Makerspaces
Inspired by MAKE magazine and Maker Faire, a community gathering begun in 2006,
makerspaces are physical spaces with digital and mechanical tools and materials where
students learn to design, tinker with, and build tangible objects. Schools have begun to
establish makerspaces in libraries and other available spaces. Multidisciplinary activities can
draw from computer and technical education, home economics, STEM disciplines, art, and
music. 3-D printers , often found in makerspaces, build physical models in plastic or other
material one layer at a time from 3-D modeling or CAD software. Some makerspaces are full
of technologies such as Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, and scanners; others repurpose items such
as newspaper and cardboard. Kat Sauter reported that some of her students in their
makerspace at The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin, Texas,
designed and created a preschool playhouse, and other students focused on creating an app
for school information (Breedlove, 2015). Makerspaces are less about the specific outcome
and more about the process of design, inquiry, and making.

Trend 2: Computational Thinking

With recent emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM),
computer programming , making , and robotics in the United States, educators have begun
to coalesce around the value of having students learn computation thinking skills.
Definitions of computational thinking vary but the aim is to develop students with
knowledge and skills in problem solving, design, inquiry, abstraction, quantitative reasoning,
data analysis and interpretation, modeling, computer programming, pattern identification,
conditional logic, algorithms, and symbol systems. Students use creative ways of thinking in
computer science to break down, model, and explore phenomena and to identify
explanations or solutions through the use of computers. The Computer Science Teacher
Association (CSTA) is a resource for current concepts, curricula, and assessments regarding
computational thinking, but all teachers should learn about it because it is one of the 2016
ISTE Standards for all students.

Trend 3: Online Learning

As high-speed connections become more readily available in schools and homes and
handheld devices such as tablets become capable of online access, more students are taking
online courses. The number of virtual schools operating across states is increasing (Gemin,
Paper, Vashaw, & Watson, 2015), and some schools now offer a completely online diploma.
Although controversies such as funding and quality control exist, distance learning for K–12
students eventually will have the same impact on reshaping schools as it has had on
redefining higher education.

Trend 4: Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have heralded a new way to look at learning for
free. One of the outcomes of the open-content movement, MOOCs hold the promise of a
future where education is less expensive or free and available to anyone anywhere in the
world. MOOCs might not be used in formal K–12 schools because of student privacy issues,
but they can be useful for educators’ professional learning or for identifying resources for
the classroom. For example, The Exploratorium in San Francisco developed a MOOC to
introduce the fundamentals of “tinkering” to educators as a form of professional
development (Exploratorium, 2015).

Trend 5: Immersive Physical and Virtual Environments

New environments and tools that use augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) are being
created to integrate the physical world with virtual elements to engage learners in
understanding conceptual or hard to-replicate phenomena. For example, RoomQuake is an
earthquake simulation system that allows students over the course of several weeks
to experience and analyze data from earthquakes to identify the fault line (Moher, n.d.).
SimBio is a virtual biology lab offering simulated openended experiments. Researchers
(Meir, Abraham, Klopfer, & Li, 2012) are developing dynamic formative assessment to
enable better learning.
Virtual reality has become more mainstream in society, which is demonstrated by the
availability of low-cost Google Cardboard viewing devices that pair with mobile phones.
News agencies, such as The New York Times, publish (VR) extensions to many of their news
stories (The New York Times, 2016). Google Expeditions help teachers take students on
virtual fieldtrips (Google, 2016).

Trend 6: Games and Gamification

Games have been found to profoundly engage learners and lead to learning gains in subject
matter, a key aspect of what researchers call a serious game . Gamification , or
incorporating the most motivational aspects of games (e.g., badges awarded for success)
into nongame activities, is attracting more attention from both software developers and
educators. The hope is that driving interest and rewarding student achievement can
increase the time spent on learning activities.

Trend 7: Personalized Learning

Learning analytics has driven a fast-growing trend toward personalized learning systems
(PLS) , or computer-based instructional and management programs, that (1) assess
individual student learning needs using complex algorithms and collections of data across
students and (2) provide a customized instructional experience matched to each student.

Trend 8: Educational Options for Students with Learning Needs

New technologies continue to make the most dramatic advances in opportunities for people
with special learning needs. With more hardware and software developers using universal
design principles, more future technologies will be used by all people. Specific innovations
will be designed for targeted needs. For example, an NSF-sponsored project has developed
an interactive robot with gestures and facial expressions for Chinese conversational
language learning (RALL-E project, 2016).