Learning technologies:Then & Now
What is the future of learning technologies?
Thoughts on the Piles of Literature
Learning Technologies: Then & Now
Learning technologies are not new. Purveyors of learning from the time of Socrates up through today continue to invent and apply methodologies to strengthen and enhance the teacher-student relationship and the efficacious conveyance of information. Technology is the appropriate use of specific knowledge, most generally scientific. Every age had a method, constantly morphing as newer and better technologies were developed to convey knowledge to the student. Despite the technology of the time, the purpose has always remained the same; to educate! The rise of the computer age of the 1980s and the digital age of the late 1990s has propagated a paradigm shift in education creating a focused study of the use of new technology in today’s educational environments. Digital learning technologies are mainstream in education today and found in the corporate training room and schools K-12. Online courses and eLearning have become an industry unto itself.
Before the rise of digital appliances, an educator was the do-all, end-all, in the classroom. Although university educated and mostly state certified, few had any understanding of the pedagogy of design principles beyond a subject matter textbook, blackboard, and chalk. Today Instructional designers, digital age professionals, engage in the creation of educational curriculum utilizing cutting-edge technology. These highly skilled and creative individuals are transcribing subject matter using new and exciting digital formats and platforms for the 21st century. They work with a hope, a promise, and a dream that learning technologies will increase one’s ability to learn, to create cost-effective delivery, and to provide accessibility in the classroom through distance learning venues. Today digital curriculum development is a crucial component for the practical application of learning in the digital classroom landscape. Professor Joel Gardner of Franklin University explains three areas of Instructional Design (ID) in his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0iQgStGND4 (Gardner, 2012). He discusses the importance of understanding learning theory, the culture of management and learners in the design process, and under which umbrella of development and implementation one might be asked to design, e.g., the military, K-12, or corporate. Another exampled video featuring Onna, an instructional designer who is employed by the Internet school, Khan Academy, candidly explains her responsibilities, the requirements of ID and the financial aspects of ID in her YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5K5axz_8Ws&t=44s (Careers and Personal Finance, 2018).
What is the Future of Learning Technologies?
In the scheme of things measured within the context of time, ten years is not notable. Prognosticating and projecting one’s self into the future can conjure up any number of fantastical images. What would a German citizen answer in 1929 to predict the rise of the Socialist party in 1939? Who in 1919 was predicting the collapse of the stock market in 1929? In 2009, as the technology was becoming mainstay and learning technologies was developing potentiality in education, would one be able to predict the state of learning technologies as used and understood today? A property of “the future” is that it is always built of a platform of optimistic promise. One can predict anything from the outrageous to the sublime. Where learning technologies are going, one can only speculate, but if guesses, albeit intelligent guesses based on the history of the development of other products and innovations, one’s bet would be to see continued research and slow to modest growth in learning technologies. To fully see technology become the promise of the future, one foresees another century required. Virtual realities will play some role; artificial intelligence will not develop in the next ten years to have a significant impact, holographic imagery will continue to be developed but is also beyond the decade to become a mainstay. One could predict that the newborn child with a 2019 birth date will know how to use some technology in 2029 and their parents, having been a generation raised in technology will think nothing of it, nor will educators. However, that 2019 baby will look back at age 80 and speak of the good old days like the dark ages. Learning technology will be fully integrated into the educational system in the next ten years if the economic and political structures of society do not collapse. Just like the first flight a century ago at the turn of the 20th century, could you predict the stock market collapse, the next two world wars, or the rise of a Socialist party any better than one’s great grandparents? Developing and answering the question based on research and observation of the past is a best predictor, but then still only an ignorant guess. Every morning a new decade begins. Look to make decisions today, make changes today, learn more today: Carpe diem.
The evidence to support one’s view surrounds us all. It is written in the literature of all times. The wisdom of philosophers, prophets, poets, and pundits, all give testimony. The historian, physicist, the psychologist, and the economist all contribute to one’s view with evidence that the future is unpredictable, that human life flickers in the breeze with the vagaries of suffering and a delusion of happiness. They speak of one’s predestined fate, and of what is moral and what is normal. The greatest delusion and most presumptuous of all is that man can control or has influences on the future. It is quintessentially absurd. The literature that one is reading or that one has read lends itself to many conjectures. As one writes and shares one’s thoughts, so has Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Dawkins, Schopenhauer, Thoreau, Becker, Sapolsky, Harari, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Rand, Tolle, Hesse, Kant, and Easwaran to list a few influential thinkers, have shared their thoughts with me. One must also toss in the Karan, the Bible, the Torah, the Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Tao Te Ching.
The literature concerning learning technologies is telling me that those who have invested decades of time and money to the subject will continue to invest time and money into the subject. Theorist have to theorize, writers have to write, and researchers have to research. Theories will rise, be discussed, modified, re-discussed, and re-theorized. Some will be abandoned, and some will be accepted as applicable for implementation, and some deemed impractical to implement but correct in theory. Study and research will continue, new ideas will be tried, some will be better than others, and progress will be slow to begin but explode as core practice at some future time. Implementation will be difficult, expensive, and have a high failure rate. In short, the works contained with the course’s readings, makes one’s argument, for they are generally a decade old: Baylor's paper 1999, Leidner 1995, Clark 1983, Molenda 2002,2009, Kozma 1991, Dillon and Gabbard 1998, example a few. What that research exemplifies is the continuation of thought, theory, and opinion of leaning technologies. The literature demonstrates the search for an understanding and approach to the promise and prediction that technology in education will become manifest. As mentioned previously, the future is always built on the platform of optimistic promise. To predict the future, look to the past, for it does seem to repeat. Second Life, Twitter, and gaming in education is written about with exuberance and potential. So, one asks, where are these cyber communication and virtual realities in educational practice with unwavering success?
As to the last questions presented, no answer will be given, as one’s interest was not categorized as “most or least,” but collectively comprehended and appreciated with equal weight. One was not confused as the readings began the accumulation of a knowledge base, and although initial readings were singularly isolated from the whole, additional reading built a pattern of thought that has set a good foundation for further readings and work on the subject. As far as a depth of thought, you have just read one’s opinions, which should suffice, but should it not reach to the level of one expectation, one can only capitulate.
