Secondary Office: CoC Building, Room 132 (Tues, Thurs)
Office hours: CoC Building, Room 132, Tuesdays: 1:30 – 3:00; Thursdays: 1:30 to 3:30; often in the mornings on Tues and Thurs – get in touch to be sure
Phone: 404-894-3285 (GCATT, can leave messages here); 404-385-1491 (T, Th, no messages)
My goal, in this course, is to help you learn what you need in order to be a productive and substantial member of a design team for educational software and/or hardware. As such, I want you to learn the basics of those things that are important to the design of educational technology – how people learn, philosophies and approaches to education, issues important in design and methodologies for design of educational technology, the variety of uses technology has been put to educationally, and ways of evaluating whether your design is achieving its goals. Of course, there isn’t time to learn everything about all topics, so I’m aiming that you become familiar with each and understand its basics and that you know enough to be able to recognize that you need to learn more and know where to go to find out what you need to know.
I try to teach in a way that is consistent with what I know about learning and with best practices in education. Sometimes I succeed brilliantly, and sometimes I fall flat on my face. I depend on you guys to help me know if anything needs changing.
What I know about learning is that we learn best when we have a chance to discover what we need to learn and to do some exploration on our own to find out a bit before going to experts for what they have to say. I know, too, that we learn well when we try things and don’t succeed right away but have someone to help us explain what went wrong and figure out what revisions to make. And I’ve discovered that peer audiences and peer presentations are one way of providing that support. We also have a need to go over and articulate, from time to time, what it is we are learning.
That’s how this class will be run. There will be readings, and you will be responsible for reading anything that is assigned. But, except for the first week, there won’t be anything assigned that doesn’t answer a question you have already identified as important. How will you identify what’s important? Several ways: (1) You’ll do one or two short design projects of my choosing in groups of 2 to 3 people using only what you know at the time each is assigned. You’ll present your design ideas to the class both on line and in class, and we’ll have a discussions about the pros and cons of everybody’s choices. This will help us make list of what needs to be learned. (2) You’ll examine and perhaps play with several pieces of software, identifying what you like and don’t like about each. From there, you’ll be able to identify other issues having to do with how you design to achieve those things you like. (3) You’ll do an extended design project of your choosing during the second half of the semester. This will get us deeper into the issues involved in design and evaluation of educational technology. As you move forward and present to the class, we’ll discover the other things you need to learn.
To keep track of what you are learning, you’ll keep a design diary or journal – on line or on paper, your choice – and we’ll keep a class list of "rules of thumb" as we identify them.
Class time will be spent in several activities: discussing the ins and outs of something in a paper you’ve read, discussing the ins and outs of software you’ve played with or seen, discussing the ins and outs of software and hardware you are designing, and extracting design rules of thumb from your experiences and readings.
Because of the things we know about learning, our focus during the semester will mostly be on technology that enhances construction of one’s own understanding of concepts and skills and that promotes learning from hands-on activities. And because of what we know about learning, I’m going to encourage you to consider several important issues as you are designing: (i) the tasks learners are involved in and the cognition involved in doing those tasks; (ii) the cognition of learning, especially learning by doing (active learning from experience); (iii) social interactions in the environment and their impact on learning; and (iv) the role of the teacher and interactions between teacher, students, and technology. But it’s early to tell you those things; you’ll come to understand what I’m saying here later in the class.
I expect everybody to be active participants in our discussions. Some of you will be shy about speaking in class. Some of you might not follow everything we discuss in class. I’ll provide everything I can to help you with those things. I expect you to do the assignments, readings, and projects thoughtfully and to come to class prepared. I’ll make sure to use the electronic whiteboard to jot down the most important things that come up in discussion so that you have a way to go back and review. In addition, we’ll do some of our presenting to each other and discussions on line in our class swiki, or co-web. If you’re one of those shy folks who doesn’t talk in class, make sure you participate enough on line to make up for it.
I want you to learn a lot, and I want you to have fun while doing it. That doesn’t mean you won’t work hard. I do expect hard work. And, believe it or not, I hope to learn from you during the semester. Feel free to come talk to me or send me email. If you can’t make my office hours, then make an appointment for another time.
Janet
Text: There is no text book. As papers are assigned, they will be made available outside of College of Computing, Room 132, to be copied by students; some papers will also be available on; in addition, students will examine several websites during the semester.
Office hours: in 132 College of Computing Building; times listed above. Or send email to set up an appointment.
Educational technology: We’ll be using two major pieces of educational technology during this class – the Classroom 2000 setup and the swiki, or co-web. Classroom 2000 is normally used for lecture classes, and we are more of a project and discussion class. We therefore use Classroom 2000 differently that you might be used to. Rather than using it as a way to display transparencies I’ve created, I use it to record the important things said during class discussions. As well, the hook-up to the web will allow you to prepare things you want to show the class on the web and have your presentation become part of our archive. I’ve found that for those whose first language isn’t English, this setup provides a means toward better understanding of what’s gone on in class. And, even for those whose first language is English, if the class discussion is moving at a fast pace, you might miss things and want to go back and review. The recording of our discussions allow that. The swiki, or co-web, is technology developed by Mark Guzdial at Georgia Tech, based on software developed at Apple, and it will serve as our clssroom discussion area. The technology allows us to create and write web pages and organize them as we see fit. One nice thing about the swiki technology is that it allows any of us to be the agent who gets things started and reorganizes pages. I’m hoping that some of you will become comfortable enough and excited enough with what we’re doing that you will initiate conversations on the co-web. Our co-web front page is http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080 /edtech00. You’re welcome to look at co-web pages created by my previous classes (http://sectry.cc.gatech.edu:8080/edtech99, http://sectry.cc.gatech.edu:8080/edt, and http://sectry.cc.gatech.edu:8080/edtech ) to see how we’ve used them in the past. You’ll see some of the projects my graduate classes have worked on. I’d also love to have you try out my software, SMILE.
Aims: Hopefully, you’ll identify issues you want and need to learn more about in five areas:
Requirements:
Course Outline : This is very hard to do in a class where you will be setting the agenda. I will, however, be a not-so-invisible facilitator of what you are doing, and I’m guessing our agenda will be as follows:
Weeks 1 and 2: Read a few introductory papers. Design your first educational technology. Present and discuss in class. Identify issues for further learning.
Week 3: Readings and discussion about learner-centered design (LCD)
Weeks 4 and 5: What has the computer been used for educationally? You’ll look at cutting edge computer use in education by examining a variety of websites. We’ll discuss what you are seeing in class.
Weeks 6, 7, and 8: Reading about the important issues you’ve identified. Second design project due beginning of week 7 with discussion end of week 7 and a chance to revise and further discussion in week 8.
Beginning of week 8?: midterm (unless I can give you a midterm grade based on your project work to date. I’d prefer that.)
Week 9 - 16: Begin long-term projects. The rest of the course will be an interweaving of project presentations and discussions and readings about topics of importance and discussions. I’ll assign particulars of the project assignments as we get closer.