Week 2 - Educational Technology

This week, we learned how educational technology applies to many fields. Tape recorders and videocassette players are how we used to use technology. In the 1920s-30s we saw slides, radio, and sound recordings being designed and used. Educational technology can be used in everyday use or even business as media and audio visual communications as well as social tools such as blogs, wikis, web pages, and social networks. It can be used for vocational training or instructional systems in any field. It provides us with active learning techniques and practical applications. We also saw a video about a meeting of a group called TED. In this video we got to see some really cool inventions that were designed specifically for practical purposes such as clothing shopping in Prada, cubicals that aren't awful, recycling of roof runoff water at the Millennium Dome in London, and a tool for scuba diving without getting wet.

In the education field, educational technology will be very useful. It will make it easier to cater instruction to more students. It adds more aspects to the traditional audio, visual, and kinesthetic ways of teaching. It help combine these on a regular basis and maybe could help the students learn faster because they are stimulating more parts of the brain at one time. I think it would be neat to see how many trees we can save by doing more assignments on computers. It could be really cool to inspire kids by showing them some of these videos and then have them try to invent something. It gives them practical ways of critical thinking. Also, in such a technological age, kids will be more comfortable showing what they know using technology. Plus they will think it is more fun because it's not the boring way that most of us older people are used to.


I chose this video from YouTube because it shows how teachers can effectively use technology in the classroom.