Low tech...bad tech...

I love all the options and capabilities technology gives us. From the Internet to computers to cell phones, technology can be a very pervasive attribute in your life (assuming you are at a socio-economic level to take advantage of these things). What often gets lost when talking about technology is the realization that technology has been used in classrooms for decades. The blackboard, mimeographed copies (I can still smell that ink), overhead projectors, are all examples of things that might not come top of mind when talking about technology in the classroom.

Low tech

The whiteboard (a descendant of yesterday's chalk board) is a pretty simplistic, pretty useful piece of tech. It works in a traditional class room setting where the instructor lectures or even has students come to the front of the class to solve a problem. Smaller portable versions work well for group work during class. It allows a pretty simple way for the user to express herself through text and graphics (perhaps not as polished as a Google image search, but definitely very accessible). It provides a central focus point for the entire class, helping to keep everyone mentally together. When used for an appropriate purpose, like having the class work through a complicated math problem as a group, it works beautifully.

Bad tech
Not too long ago, UK outfitted several rooms on campus with Echo360. This allowed for instructors to record segments of or even entire classes and share the video and audio with a broader audience. One implementation of this actually worked particularly well. All freshman are required to take six hours of composition and communication courses. Public speaking is a big part of these courses. Echo360 allows the teacher to record student speeches and then provide the video recording of Susie's speech back to Susie along with comments about how Susie can do better the next time. The student can review the video and audio of her speech and see specifically what the instructor points to for improvement. However, it isn't always used so well.

One of the programs we offer is entirely online (master's in library science). The instructors in that program saw Echo360 as an opportunity to make their courses better. Some simply used the desktop application and recorded their image and their notes as they talked. Sometimes that went okay. However, other instructors saw this as an opportunity to lecture. Instructors would reserve rooms for an hour (or more) and record themselves delivering a traditional class-room lecture. They would then upload hour long videos to their course shell and require students to watch them in their entirety. In this scenario, this particular technology was being used, not so much to better engage students. Instead, it was being used to make the instructor feel more like he was 'teaching'. Not all instructors take well to the online environment. Some rely so heavily on only the traditional mode of lecturing that that was the only way they could feel that they were properly instructing students.

In the end, technology is just a tool. And like most tools, it has tasks it is good for, and others it's not so good for. Understanding the task at hand and being able to select the correct tool - technology or other - is critical in instruction. Most of the time, like with the hour long Echo360 videos, you can get the job done, but it's ugly and inefficient. Spending more time focusing on the needs of the student(s) and selecting appropriate tools can go a long way towards (at least) better instruction and learning.