EDTEC 540 - Mod 1 Notes

I know I’m crazy. I just finished a Master’s degree and have already started on another one, just 12 days after graduation, even while on my vacation to Greece. Well, actually classes started while I was away, but I’m only now just getting my brain into gear again. Fortunately, I can complete this entire degree (if I wanted to do so) online through SDSU (San Diego State University) in the comfort of my own home, or wherever I want, whenever I want.

This summer I’m taking two classes, EDTEC 540 and EDTEC 541, the foundational courses for the program. This coming fall, I think I may slow down a bit with this program and take either one or no classes and for sure I think I will take Tagalog at Palomar.

Instead of taking notes on separate paper or even on my laptop or desktop, I’ve decided to try doing some of my work online so it can be searchable more easily through this blog. If I decide that I need some documentation of this stuff, I can easily copy the text into a Word document and save it as well. So without further ado . . .

Module 01: The Field of Educational Technology

From where do educational technologists come? Ed Tech is the study of the art and science of learning and teaching. People who work in this field come from all walks of life and career paths. One common characteristic they share is that they love to learn.

Where do educational technologists work?

• Schools: Former teachers who now develop courses, technology coordinators who facilitate technology integration, and higher education designers who create courseware, distance learning programs, and support faculty.
• Business: Meet training needs and personnel development.
• Military: Armed services have massive training needs — manuals, job aids, operation guides.
• Specialties: Companies that specialize in ed tech, serving as consultants and experts to other businesses and organizations.

What do educational technologists do?

• Analyze: Human performance problems, analyze goals and methods of accomplishing them.
• Design: Formulate objectives that address needs and design the tools needed to fulfill those needs.
• Develop: Construct the tools, job aids, multimedia components, graphics needed in the overall design.
• Implement: Teachers, trainers, facilitators who deliver the content to the learners.
• Evaluate: Assess the effectiveness of the design and its tools throughout the process, as well as during and after implementation. Provides specific recommendations for improvement.
• Project Management: Supervises the work of others involved in this process.

What do educational technologists create?

• Instructional Products: Textbooks, workbooks, manuals, guides, job aids, videos, multimedia.
• Instructional Programs: Classes, worskshops, even entire courses/curricula.

Here is our group assignment, which was to answer 10 questions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2005 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Education and Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.