Educational Technology

My introduction to educational technology was as a support person/webmaster for Education Outreach at UW-Eau Claire (UWEC). Perhaps because of the non-standard nature of the Outreach program, or perhaps because of my communication and art studies, I had never thought of technology in education as merely an aid to help present educational material. Instead, I saw it as a tool for students and teachers alike to engage with as a puzzle. Computer technology was always tightly intertwined with problem-solving.

After earning a Masters in English, I was hired as an associate lecturer in the UWEC School of Education. In the "Computers in the Classroom" classes that I taught to preservice teachers, I focused on this idea of computers as a puzzlespace. As we wrestled with questions of how and why to use computers in the classroom, I made the students switch between platforms and applications. Each week we alternated between Macs and PCs, starting a document on one and finishing it on the other.

It was a subtle and limited lesson in multiculturalism on a very abstracted level, but this strategy included a built-in need for the students (and myself) to step back from a linear process of specificities, and examine their thoughts from multiple perspectives.

Still, at that point, "technology" mostly meant "computers" to me, and "education" mostly meant "school".

UW Madison

In my initial Educational and Communication Technology, and Educational Psychology, graduate classes in the School of Education, I began to realize that any tools employed in learning can be seen as educational technology. The usual suspects were included: pencil, chalkboard, overhead projector, and computer, to be sure. But also included were math manipulatives, and books, and desks, and overhead lighting, etc.

At the same time, I began to see serious shortcomings in the construction of the classroom as the official (and only) educational structure. The majority of educational moments, and subsequent learning, occurs outside of the classroom, with peers, in front of the television, in books, in church, at the mall, in relationships, at summer camps, etc. Yet many in the field of education seem to discount this learning.

In the summers I help run a wilderness canoe camp in Maine, and it was obvious to me that a tremendous amount of learning was taking place there, where, absent of electricity and telephone, the educational technology consisted of fires, wood-canvas canoes, and packs.

Although my coursework followed a technology-based program, I ended up focusing on the cultural models of boyhood and masculinity in the Discourse of the owners/directors of the summer camp for my Masters thesis.

I believe that the social, environmental and individual aspects of the experiences we have frames our identities. I try to explain it in this Quicktime translation of my Identity Star idea.

Current research

I have very recently shifted my focus of study from my masters research, and still feel somewhat nebulous in describing it, or even grasping it myself. I am taking elements from my masters research, but am adding what I think is constructionism. I haven't done enough reading on this additional element though, to know who to cite for the specific theoretical angle that I come from (I'm thinking people like John Dewey, Maxine Greene, Lev Vygotsky, and Seymour Papert). Here's how I currently describe it:

My theoretical framework focuses on identity, which I feel is constructed both individually and socially. Individually, through one's individual agency asserted by one's constructionist actions. This individual agency, however is both informed and structurally regulated by the Discourses of the Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) one inhabits. Because I am looking at online worlds, I look at secondary Discourses, those learned outside the home environment (Gee 1996) with the understanding that these may vary from primary Discourses, which are shaped in part by different physical needs.

There are elements that I haven't fully worked out, and I would not be surprised if key parts of the theories I am working from contradict key parts of another. Be that as it may, this is the worldview that I currently hold, and the one that I am coming from in trying to understand the themes of this course. All are social constructivists, but where Dewey's experiential education, and Greene's Aesthetics-based theory seem to focus more on the individual's own agency, Vygotsky's ZPD, Lave & Wenger's Communities of Practice and Gee's Discourse seem to place more stress on how individuals' agency is couched in the dynamics of their communities.

This focus on individual discourse and practice enforced by social expectation and guidance leads neatly into themes of regimes of truth, normatvity, and performativity. Given the power dynamics of the individual and society that this theoretical perspective recognizes, I found it somewhat easy to imagine and wrap my mind around themes of double consciousness, and hybridity -- what happens when one exists, or partially exists, outside of a community, or in multiple communities. I am further aided here by Gee's thoughts, shared in class, on the difficulties of successfully navigating through multiple Discourses, as when a child moves from his primary Discourse into a school-based Discourse (Gee, Nov. 2, 2004).

 

As fellow in the Spencer Doctoral Research Program (DRP), spent the semester exploring research. This is part of an exploration of my research ideas as I started the PhD program in Fall 2004.

This is a review of the path I've taken to get to my current (Fall 2004) research interests.