The Silicon Classroom — Week 1

After months of planning and waiting, Gloria and I were elated to meet the participants of the Silicon Classroom 2016! As instructors, we want to help our students establish a definition of ed tech & equity that incorporates the impact that they would like to have in the world. We are excited to learn from all of our students as well and hear what unique educational background and perspective each person brings to a discussion.

During our first class meeting, we explored definitions of educational technology. The class voted on whether items such as a regular book, a bucket of rice, and a Kinect were considered ed tech or not. Two important metrics were established — context and application. Technology is ever changing to suit the needs of different cultures and populations. After the digital revolution, technology was more likely to be thought of as something including a computer. However, Legos were labeled ‘educational technology’ as quickly as tablets were. This brought us to our next point — how a piece of technology is used in the context of a classroom matters. A bucket of rice being used to teach students how to count was educational technology to those students, whereas to us all we saw was a bucket of rice.

Now that we have challenged our existing definitions and ideas about educational technology, we will take a look at the history of educational technology during our next class meeting to get a better understanding of the big picture. There is no single, correct definition for educational technology — both education and technology are amorphous fields — and we encourage each student to continue building a definition given the class content and their personal experiences.