Page 10 - TeL

Week 1

Overview

Welcome to the world of educational technology (often abbreviated
as just EdTech). The aim of this course is to “get your feet wet” with
both established and emerging technologies that are used to enhance
teaching and learning—whether it be in blended or distributed learning
scenarios. We’ll be exploring the history of educational technology, and
how technology can be used to find, create, and share information and
resources. We’ll be discussing effective technology integration strate-
gies, and issues related to the ethics and pragmatics of technology use.
And we’ll be exploring how to plan, create, and evaluate technology-en-
hanced learning experiences.
In this course, we’re going to learn by getting “hands-on.” Your central
project for this course will be to plan, design, and create a technolo-
gy-enhanced learning experience using an online platform. Most of the
course assignments actually constitute sequential steps in the process
of creating this resource. We’ll also be engaging with ourselves, and
with larger audiences of educators interested in the use of educational
technology, by creating and sharing our own course portfolios.
Your task this week is to become familiar with the course objectives, re-
sources, and activities, and to get yourself set up and running for a busy
but exciting term. We’ll also be spending some time this week exploring
and discussing a brief history of educational technology, from oral com-
munication (yes—language is a technology) up to modern distributed
learning platforms.

Topics

Week 1 is divided into three topics:
Topic 1: Technology Integration
The History of Online Learning
Topic 2: Technology Exploration
Topic 3: Community Engagement
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this week’s activities, you should be able to:

Discuss the history of educational technology.

10