- Select educational technologies that support an intended learning outcome.
- Describe useful practices and possible problems associated with educational technology.
- Use backward design, SAMR, SECTIONS, a tool-selection flowchart, and Bloom's Taxonomy to examine technology choices.
- Explain how prediction and collaborative structures can turn an activity into active learning.
Choose the Goal Before the Tool
Begin with the learning result, then decide whether a technology can help students reach it.
A useful comparison comes from a home-improvement store. A helpful employee first asks what you are making or trying to accomplish. Only after understanding the project does the employee recommend equipment. Educational technology should be chosen in the same order: clarify the intended learning outcome first, then identify a tool that can advance it.
Make Demonstrations Active Through Prediction
Seeing an event is not enough; prediction and peer discussion can make students engage with it.
Work from Eric Mazur's group examined demonstrations in a freshman mechanics course. Students watched a mass M moving on an air track collide with a mass 2M. When asked later in that same class to describe a comparable collision, many answered incorrectly even though they had just observed it.
The result challenges an expert's assumption that a memorable display automatically produces learning. Students may remain mentally passive while an instructor performs an apparently vivid demonstration.
- Before the demonstration, have each learner predict the result.
- Ask learners to compare and discuss their predictions with another person.
- Run the demonstration after students have committed to their reasoning.
- Use the observed result to revisit the original predictions.
When prediction and partner discussion were added, results on the questions given after the demonstration rose substantially. George Polya had also promoted prediction before revealing an answer in the 1950s; the demonstration study supplied evidence supporting that practice.
Choose a topic that could be shown through a visual or demonstration. What prediction would students make beforehand, and what would they discuss with a partner?
Define Educational Technology Broadly
Educational technology includes varied processes and resources, not only electronic devices.
Educational technologies can have several overlapping qualities. A particular technology does not need to possess all of them.
- It may support communication between instructors and students or among students.
- It may strengthen student learning or an instructor's teaching.
- It may permit participation at different times or in different places.
- It may make learning materials easier to distribute.
- It may improve organization or productivity, as when one system holds assignments, grades, and resources.
This broad definition does not require an electronic device. A blackboard can qualify because it is a human-made means of communicating and distributing material for learning.
Technology does not improve learning by itself. Careful use can be highly effective, while poor use may be worse than leaving the technology out. Learners lose interest when they cannot see a purpose or benefit. One classroom comment compared this reaction to abandoning an app that takes roughly seven seconds to load.
Recall a technology you have encountered in teaching or learning. Did it change the learning process, or did it mainly make administration and access more convenient? What evidence supports your judgment?
Use Frameworks to Guide Technology Choices
Several lenses help connect a learning goal with an appropriate and workable technology.
These frameworks offer different views of the same central decision. None replaces the need to state what students should learn or do before selecting a tool.
Work Backward from the Outcome
First identify the intended result for students. Then ask which technology, if any, can help achieve it. This backward order keeps an appealing tool from becoming the reason for an activity.
Examine Task Change with SAMR
SAMR organizes uses of technology as Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The levels describe how much the technology changes the task.
| Level | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Substitution | The technology directly replaces an earlier medium without a meaningful functional change. | A paper syllabus becomes an online file that students download and print. |
| Augmentation | The replacement also provides a practical improvement. | Students submit scanned homework online, making the work easier to collect and less likely to disappear. |
| Modification | Technology permits a substantial redesign of the activity. | A document can incorporate email exchange, graphs, or images in ways that alter how the work is produced and viewed. |
| Redefinition | Technology makes a fundamentally different kind of task possible. | Learners build hypertext or a web page that readers navigate through a nonlinear path. |
Check Practical Conditions with SECTIONS
SECTIONS supplies a set of considerations rather than directing the user to one answer.
- S — Student characteristics: consider the learners for whom the technology is intended.
- E — Ease of use: consider how readily instructors and students can learn and operate it.
- C — Cost: account for available money and the options that cost rules out.
- T — Teaching and learning: determine whether it supports the educational purpose.
- I — Interaction: examine whether it promotes active engagement.
- O — Organization: consider the institutional setting and support around the tool.
- N — Novelty: distinguish pedagogical value from attraction to something new.
- S — Speed: consider how quickly the technology can be put into use.
The framework also keeps the instructor's learning curve visible. A choice may demand significant time to understand both the technology and its effective classroom use.
Follow the Backward Ed Tech Tool Flowchart
The flowchart opens with the question, “What do you want students to do?” It then uses guiding questions to route that student task toward a possible technology. Its list is not exhaustive, but its structure makes the activity—not the tool—the starting point.
Unlike SECTIONS, this model points through branches toward a suggested result. SECTIONS instead helps a decision-maker remember constraints and considerations without prescribing a final selection.
Match the Tool to the Cognitive Level
Kathy Schrock mapped applications to the Bloom's Taxonomy levels remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The mapping is neither exclusive nor complete, but it highlights that a technology may support one kind of thinking without supporting another.
Recognize Different Uses of Technology
One course can use technology in several overlapping ways.
Educational technologies can be grouped according to where they appear and what they do. The categories overlap; the same technology may belong to more than one.
- During class: clickers, projection systems, smart boards, simulations, and virtual demonstrations can gather responses or help present ideas.
- Beyond class meetings: wikis and other collaborative systems let learners engage with content and one another at different times.
- Delivery and enrichment: websites, online lectures, simulations, and additional digital materials can extend access to course content.
- Student work: an assignment may require learners to create a company website, record interviews, or complete online problems.
- Assessment and feedback: clicker questions can provide formative information, while online quizzes and other systems can supply feedback or assessment.
- Course administration: a learning management system can distribute materials and maintain records such as grades.
For example, an instructor might display a simulation during class and also give students access to it afterward. The important question in either setting is which intended outcome that use advances.
Model Collaborative Learning with a Jigsaw
A jigsaw gives each learner responsibility for one area of expertise and for explaining it to peers.
The class modeled a jigsaw using behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Learners first worked in groups devoted to one theory, then moved into mixed groups containing an expert from each area.
- Form separate behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist groups.
- Have each group identify a technology consistent with its theory and consider an outcome it could advance.
- Rearrange learners so each new group includes one specialist from every theory.
- Ask each specialist to explain the group's theory and technology choice to the other members.
This structure makes learners active participants and gives every person responsibility as a content expert. Digital collaboration tools may support such work, but the jigsaw itself is an active-learning technique rather than a technology.
Anticipate Problems and Plan for Effective Use
Technology succeeds only when its purpose, implementation, access, and instructional use are carefully considered.
Educational technology is not automatically beneficial. Several recurring problems can prevent it from serving the intended learning outcome.
- Weak integration: students may treat a tool as an annoyance when its instructional purpose is unclear. Clickers used mainly to record attendance led students to share devices, respond and leave, or arrive only to click.
- Insufficient preparation: collaborative technology and group discussion require the instructor to understand both the tool and the teaching method used with it.
- Access and compatibility barriers: a shared drawing board or document may work on tested computers yet fail or demand extra steps on some phones.
- Cost constraints: an appealing piece of software may be impractical when its annual price is beyond the available budget.
- Limited task change: simply turning an existing item into a digital version may improve convenience without changing learning.
- Tool-first planning: selecting technology before stating the intended outcome reverses the sound decision process.
- Begin with a contained activity rather than assuming every adoption must redesign an entire course.
- Tell learners why the technology is being used and invite information about difficulties they encounter.
- Allow time for the instructor and students to learn the system and its classroom use.
- Review the choice through backward design, SAMR, and SECTIONS.
- When presenting a demonstration or technology-based display, add a student thinking task such as prediction and discussion.
Common misconceptions
Watch out: A demonstration is automatically an active-learning activity for students.
Instead: The instructor is active while performing it, but students may only watch. Prediction and peer discussion create a cognitive role for learners.
Watch out: Only electronic devices count as educational technology.
Instead: The definition is broader. A human-made resource such as a blackboard can communicate and distribute material in support of learning.
Watch out: Introducing educational technology necessarily enhances learning.
Instead: Its effect depends on the design and implementation. A poorly integrated tool may add frustration and can be worse than not using it.
Watch out: A system that efficiently stores grades and materials must also promote deeper learning.
Instead: It may be a useful delivery or administrative system without functioning as a learning activity.
Lesson recap
The central measure of educational technology is not how new or sophisticated it appears, but how well it serves an intended learning result.
- State what learners should achieve before considering a technology.
- Clarify whether the tool supports communication, distribution, interaction, assessment, creation, or administration.
- Use SAMR to examine task change, SECTIONS to review practical factors, and the backward flowchart to connect student activity with a possible tool.
- Check that the technology fits the Bloom's level required by the outcome.
- Plan for access, cost, preparation, and meaningful integration instead of relying on novelty.
- Build active thinking into the experience through practices such as prediction, discussion, and the jigsaw structure.