DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Technology in Education: Opportunities and Challenges (EDUC 492) is a course I am currently taking in the Spring 2015 quarter with Professor Keith Yocam. This is the third education technology course I have taken in the MA-IDE program. The readings, discussions, and learning activities have offered an array of perspectives on how, when, and why technology should or should not be used in schools, as well as a look into what education will be like in the future and the roles that technology will play. The readings also provided a history of technology in education, from radio and film to television and computers, explaining why early technologies were difficult for teachers and schools to embrace and use regularly.

 

EDUC 492 is part of a three-course series that includes EDUC 420 (the 4 C’s with Tech Tools), and having taken both with Professor Yocam, I have noticed some overlap in content and in structure; however, the courses have both been rich with learning opportunities and the experiences I’ve engaged in and the knowledge acquired have been valuable and will be useful for me in the years to come. We explore current, emerging, and future technologies, as well as understanding the history of educational technologies, within the larger context of how we define “schools” and how formal learning is or will be structured.

 

For the final project, we focused on three types of technologies we would adopt in our schools or workplaces over the course of the next five years. I selected three that I am particularly interested in: the flipped classroom, games and gamification, and the quantified self. This project outlines how I see these general educational technologies enhance mathematics education in particular. Because this draws on both mathematics and emerging technologies, experience and personal interests, the existing Quantway and Statway courses and my visions for the future, I see this fitting in the Lumina Foundation's M.A. Degree Qualification within the broad, integrative knowledge expectations, designing an applied creative work that draws on multiple perspectives.

 

To some extent, the Quantway course makes use of flipped classroom tactics – each homework assignment has a Preparing for the Next Lesson section that addresses prerequisite skills needed to complete the upcoming lesson. A flipped classroom model for Quantway may pull all of the mathematical concept-introducing problems from the lessons for students to complete before class, and in-class time could be devoted to applying the concepts they’ve learned in the contextual “problem situations.” The at-home portion of flipped lessons could also include “targeted math supports” – interventions catered to the mathematical knowledge needs of individual students, that is, when specific students need more practice with skills and concepts not explicitly covered in the curriculum, these supports would provide the extra assistance.

 

The gamification idea is one that is extremely appealing to me, but games and gamification are not elements of Pathways curriculum currently. This is one reason why I would like to shift from working on community college curriculum to working on math curriculum at the K-8 level, where gamification in education may be more accepted, but the Horizon Report[1] for higher education (which lists the emerging technologies from which we selected three for this project) presents a case for games and gamification at the college level. It was interesting for me to explore what the integration of this “digital strategy” (Johnson et al., 2014, p. 35) into our existing curriculum might look like.

 

The quantified self is another movement I am interested in. This involves actively collecting quantitative data on oneself (usually health data such as vital signs, exercise and fitness, food and nutrition intake, sleep habits, caffeine and alcohol consumption, etc.) and using this data to make improvements in one’s life. There are a number of popular consumer products, like FitBit, Jawbone, and now the new Apple Watch that help collect this data throughout the day (usually measures of exercise and activity), recording it and presenting it in lists or visual representations. We chose one technology to highlight in depth, and this is the technology I focused on. I collected personal data over the course of six days to illustrate the concept in my presentation.

 

This project is useful to me as these are technologies I want to incorporate into my future curriculum designs. Though they are presented as Higher Education technologies, they can also be used in K-12 settings. Thinking about the challenges and opportunities and how I might use them is important, as technologies have to be considered critically before integrating them into lessons and units.


[1] Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.