Educational technology
[18] For example, m-learning emphasizes mobility, which allows for altered timing, location, accessibility, and context of learning; nevertheless, its purpose and conceptual principles are those of educational technology.
[28][29] Helping people and children learn in ways that are easier, faster, more accurate, or less expensive can be traced back to the emergence of very early tools, such as paintings on cave walls.
The use of media for instructional purposes is generally traced back to the first decade of the 20th century[33] with the introduction of educational films (the 1900s) and Sidney Pressey's mechanical teaching machines (1920s).
The school employed computer conferencing through the New Jersey Institute of Technology's Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) to deliver a distance education program to business executives.
[36] Starting in 1985, Connected Education offered the first totally online master's degree in media studies, through The New School in New York City, also via the EIES computer conferencing system.
In 1960, the University of Illinois created a system of linked computer terminals, known as the Intranet, to give students access to recorded lectures and course materials that they could watch or use in their free time.
The 1970s and 1980s saw notable contributions in computer-based learning by Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology[42] as well as developments at the University of Guelph in Canada.
With the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, teachers embarked on the method of using emerging technologies to employ multi-object oriented sites, which are text-based online virtual reality systems, to create course websites along with simple sets of instructions for their students.
In 1997, Graziadei described criteria for evaluating products and developing technology-based courses that include being portable, replicable, scalable, affordable, and having a high probability of long-term cost-effectiveness.
[102][103][104] On the other hand, the disadvantages of flipped learning involve challenges related to student motivation, internet accessibility, quality of videos, and increased workload for teachers.
[121] Embedded single-board computers and microcontrollers such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BeagleBone are easy to program, some can run Linux and connect to devices such as sensors, displays, LEDs and robotics.
[123] Group webpages, blogs, wikis, and Twitter allow learners and educators to post thoughts, ideas, and comments on a website in an interactive learning environment.
[124][125] Social networking sites are virtual communities for people interested in a particular subject to communicate by voice, chat, instant message, video conference, or blogs.
[136] Augmented reality (AR) provides students and teachers with the opportunity to create layers of digital information, including both virtual worlds and real-world elements, to interact in real-time.
[147] The incentive to develop ITS comes from educational studies showing that individual tutoring is much more effective than group teaching,[148][149] in addition to the need for promoting learning on a larger scale.
Over the years, a combination of cognitive science and data-driven techniques have greatly enhanced the capabilities of ITS, allowing it to model a wide range of students' characteristics, such as knowledge,[150] affect,[151] off-task behavior,[152] and wheel spinning.
[156] This caused alarm among K-12 and higher education institutions,[157] with a few large school districts quickly banning GenAI,[158] due to concerns about potential academic misconduct.
[162][163] There have been various use cases in education, including providing personalized feedback, brainstorming classroom activities, support for students with special needs, streamlining administrative tasks, and simplifying assessment processes.
In a study performed by Cornell and Stanford universities, student-drop-out rates from MOOCs have been attributed to student anonymity, the solitude of the learning experience, and to the lack of interaction with peers and with teachers.
[200] In India, the National Level Common Entrance Examination (NLCEE) utilized educational technology to provide free online coaching and scholarship opportunities.
[206] Studies completed in "computer intensive" settings found increases in student-centric, cooperative, and higher-order learning, writing skills, problem-solving, and using technology.
Michel Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the center on Media and Child Health in Boston, said of the digital generation, "Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task, but for jumping to the next thing.
Although these technologies affect adults too, young people may be more influenced by it as their developing brains can easily become habituated to switching tasks and become unaccustomed to sustaining attention.
"[234] Leo Marx considered the word "technology" itself as problematic,[235] susceptible to reification and "phantom objectivity", which conceals its fundamental nature as something that is only valuable insofar as it benefits the human condition.
Because choices tend to become strongly fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habit, the original flexibility vanishes for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made.
In that sense, technological innovations are similar to legislative acts or political findings that establish a framework for public order that will endure over many generations.
[236] The QWERTY arrangement of letters on the keyboard was originally chosen, not because it was the most efficient for typing, but because early typewriters were prone to jam when adjacent keys were struck in quick succession.
We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.There is an assumption that technology is inherently interesting so it must be helpful in education; based on research by Daniel Willingham, that is not always the case.
The monetization of student data in order to integrate corporate models of marketization further pushes higher education, widely regarded as a public good, into a privatized commercial sector.
The transformation of educational technology from a cottage industry to a profession is discussed by Shurville et al.[264] Edlio is a software-focused American ed-tech company that provides various services catered towards K-12 schools.
