In reading Dr. Wiley’s testimony to the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education – Panel on Innovative Teaching and Learning Strategies, I was reminded by how many different things “educational technology” can mean.
In an earlier post, I shared my feelings about Tomaševski’s very negative feelings about technology’s use in education. I feel sure that her idea of “educational technology” must have been very different from mine.
In Dr. Wiley’s testimony, he evaluates a “normal online course” against the six dimensions of new characteristics of the world (digital, open, mobile, connected, personal, participation) and finds online courses to be meet the characteristics (“to”) in only four of six cases.
However, this course (Open Ed) clearly meets all six characteristics. Perhaps, it is not a “normal” online course. :) I say this as I am working on this course on a sub-laptop sitting on my couch, connected to the world and a million plus hugely valuable resources. I am participating with others (and writing for anyone in the world to read), but mostly viewing this course as a highly-customized personal experience for my own enrichment. (This provides a good opportunity to say that I hope Dr. Wiley doesn’t feel obliged to read all my ramblings for this course. I write a lot, because that is how I process and synthesize, but I don’t expect anyone to read it all.:)
I’m happy to say that most of my more recent experiences in education, both as a teacher and as a learner, have been digital, mobile, connected, personal, and participative. To a lesser extent, some have also been open. I’ll be working on increasing the openness in my learning experiences in the future.