ABSTRACT

This paper considers various

technological tools that
were previously designed
for purposes outside of
education and how they
might be assessed for value
within an educational
setting.

Susan Beeley
ETEC 511: Foundations of
Educational Technology

DESIGN PURPOSE AND November 27, 2015

PEDAGOGY:
The use of Technological Tools in Education
1 Assignment #2

Design Purpose and Pedagogy: The use of Technological Tools in Education

It has been a commonly mentioned issue amongst teachers and MET students that the

technology available to teachers has, for the most part, been designed for business and therefore does

not meet the needs of education. The author will argue that it is not the design of the technological tool

itself, but the pedagogy applied to the tool that renders it useless or finds value in its use for educational

purposes.

Before I enter into a discourse on the technology itself I would like to discuss the theory of

Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (hereafter referred to as TPCK) as proposed by Mishra

and Koehler (2006). TPCK is an extension of Shulmans theory of PCK (1987), which makes the point that

it is not simply enough to be familiar with the content of the curriculum in an academic way in order to

teach it. There has to be further understanding on how to deliver the content knowledge reflectively to

the intended audience in a way that they will understand.

TPCK adds the extra dimension of Technology to this foundation. There is a recognition that the

use of technology in education is growing, but as was the case with needing to apply pedagogy to the

delivery of content, teachers also have to apply pedagogy to achieve the effective incorporation of

technology in their curriculum delivery. Mishra and Koehler (2006) discuss the complex interplay

between the components of TPCK and suggest that effective use of technology in teaching requires

recognition of the relationship that exists between each pairing (technology and pedagogy, technology

and content knowledge, and pedagogy and content knowledge) and the interplay of the three

components together. It is recognition of these components and their interactions that allows for

successful integration of technological tools in education rather than the purpose of the tool being used.
2 Assignment #2

Bring your own devices (BYOD), mobile technology

In the 1970s the first mobile phone was invented. It weighed in at 1.1kg and had an even heftier

price tag of a couple of thousand pounds. It was not for the average consumer, but was made for the

high flying, wealthy business men of the day. It took ten hours to charge, allowing for thirty minutes of

talk time, so was far from the handy everyday device that we know today. Further development of the

mobile device in the 1980s resulted in the GRiDPad, a tablet designed for use in the fields of

bookkeeping, delivery driving, and claims adjustment. Its function was to minimize the paper trail

created in these industries by storing various forms for use and future reference. In keeping with

tradition, these tablets were far more expensive than computers, approximately $3000 USD with

software, and so were used primarily by the military and never gained popularity with the average

consumer. It was during the 1990s that such mobile devices became accessible to the average

consumer and have since become the norm (Goodwin, 2015).

The development of BYOD involves using mobile devices which were designed for non-

educational purpose in education. Whether e-readers, phones, MP3/4 players, notebooks or tablets,

some schools are encouraging students to bring their own devices into school so that they have constant

access to the information on the internet. Like the devices themselves, BYOD was initially adopted in

the workplace rather than in education, and to great success (Bradley, 2011). The phenomenon has

been slower to catch on in education, but due to its popularity in the workplace and limited funds in

education it is becoming increasingly important that teachers learn to incorporate BYOD into the

classroom to encourage students to use mobile devices both fluently and with purpose (Burns-Sardone,

2014).
3 Assignment #2

The province of Alberta (2012) has come up with some guidelines to direct this movement.

They outline the need for technology in education to aid in the development of 21st Century skills and

digital citizenship:

By effectively leveraging such resources, school authorities not only have the opportunity to deepen

student learning, but they can also develop digital literacy, fluency and citizenship in students that will

prepare them for the high tech world in which they will live, learn and work (Province of Alberta, 2012).

The BYOD approach increases student fluency compared to the traditional computer lab scenario as

they are already familiar with the device they are using. Schools can and should provide devices for

students to sign out if necessary to ensure equality, however. The work done in class can then focus on

collaboration, personalised learning, developing interests beyond the curriculum and promoting higher

order thinking skills. Further, the money saved by having students bring in their own personal devices

rather than using school owned ones can go towards correcting many of the problems that plague

technology use in education, such as increasing bandwidth and improving internet connectivity.

Students are very used to using their own devices, but time does need to be spent teaching

them to use their devices for educational purposes. In the classroom they should be used in much the

same way a computer or a library would be used. Though there are concerns with students accessing

social media, and getting distracted by the various other functions of a mobile device, these functions

are also possible on the schools laptops or in the computer lab and are not unique to mobile devices

(Passanisi & Peters, 2013). A key issue to the success of the BYOD movement in education, as identified

in the paper by the Province of Alberta (2012), is pedagogy and teacher readiness. The paper identifies

the changes required and the pedagogical issues of personalisation, participation and productivity as

contributing factors to student learning, each with its own implications for teachers.
4 Assignment #2

Personalisation

This is the movement away from a tightly structured curriculum delivered by the teacher. The

teachers role is now to scaffold learning, for some students this might require more direction, for

others less. The students have the freedom to focus more of their time on areas of interest, and they

determine what tools will benefit their investigation of the curriculum in inquiry based learning.

Assessment can take place in a variety of forms, including self and peer assessment, and can then be

triangulated to provide a summative measure of student understanding and progress. Collaboration

between students allows students to reflect on prior knowledge and adapt thinking as new information

comes available, thus promoting higher order thinking skills. The key ideas of scaffolding, inquiry based

learning, triangulation of assessment and collaboration are areas that will need to be well developed by

a teacher if this model is to succeed.

Participation

Through web 2.0 students can be encouraged to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate to

share ideas, develop individual knowledge, and combine group knowledge to create an end product. In

this process the teachers role is to ensure that etiquette has been established and is enforced, that the

students know how to participate in blogs or wikis, and provide learning opportunities for the students.

Productivity

Students need to be guided in the use of a variety of online tools designed to help them to

organise their work, write, design and present their work, analyse and evaluate what they have done

and demonstrate learning. Teachers will need the proficiency required to determine which tools are

available for each task, and which will work best for any given task.
5 Assignment #2

The areas outlined above require a complete shift in thinking for many of todays teachers. This

shift will require time and training so it is important, prior to and while implementing BYOD programs,

to provide professional development for teachers, time for staff to redesign learning and support for

programs that build digital citizenship (The Province of Alberta, 2012).

Powerpoint

In the mid-1980s a new lecture tool came into being. Powerpoint, like mobile devices,

originated as a tool for the business world but has become well used within education:

PowerPoint ( Microsoft Corp.) is a widely used presentation programme that originated in the world

of business but has now become commonplace in the world of educational technology. However, its use

is far from controversial in this educational context and opinions as to its use range from highly

supportive to significantly negative (Jones, 2003).

The motivation behind its development was the belief that good quality presentation graphics make

speakers look better (Austin, 2009), however it was also acknowledged that it served to amplify a

presenters skills or, as the case may be, lack thereof.

Criticisms of its use in education include its use to present a glorified lecture. For example

Adams (2006) notes that PowerPoint presentations are made in advance of the presentation and often

reused, this potentially limits the ability to move beyond the presentation in order to encourage unique

discussion and dialogue. Further, Tufte (2003) feels that presentations programs such as PowerPoint

may result in lower quality content as the focus shifts to presentation format, something that would

prove to be truly problematic in education where content is also very important. The fact that many

teachers use PowerPoint in a limited way, however, is not an issue with the tool itself but with the

pedagogy that is being applied to its use.

6 Assignment #2

Jones (2003) champions the use of PowerPoint, with appropriate pedagogical consideration, in

order enhance teaching and learning through mixed media. This requires an increased familiarity with

PowerPoint both in terms of the functions and possible designs that the program has to offer.

Mixed media

Videos, pictures and a variety of other forms of media can be imported into a PowerPoint

presentation to make it more stimulating than and ordinary lecture and to increase the diversity of

audience that the lesson appeals to. Graphics can replace text and make the same point in a more

powerful and captivating way.

Functions

PowerPoint files can be easily distributed to students so that the lesson material is accessible

outside of class. This is incredibly useful to student who, for whatever reason, need more time to

process the information presented or even for those students who have missed a lesson. Additionally,

the presentation can be printed out so that students spend more time in class engaged in the verbal

discourse rather than copying copious amounts of notes at the expense of participating in discussion.

This does come with the caution, however, that the awareness of the availability of lesson notes may

decrease student engagement.

Further, the presentations can be easily edited to allow for changes to be made as new material

comes available or as the teacher reflects on what did or did not work well in a lesson. Further,

students ideas, question, and comments can be added to the slides themselves in order to further

develop the lesson and build a sense of collaboration and community in the classroom.
7 Assignment #2

Design

The design features of PowerPoint allow a teacher to avoid several problems that exist in a

lecture using a board and pens. For example, size, font and colour of the text can be easily manipulated

not just for the sake of aesthetics but also to accommodate students who are colour blind or have

dyslexia (high contrast between the background and the text can be hard to read).

Jones (2003) suggests that teachers limit the presentation text to headings and subheading to

encourage the students to take their own notes based on the ensuing discussion. Some material can be

hidden for a later reveal to ensure that the students have all pertinent information. Text can be faded

or moved in and out to ensure students are focused on the relevant details.

From a pedagogical standpoint, when used appropriately, PowerPoint allows teachers to avoid

some of the pitfalls that may exist in a typical chalk and talk type lesson (Jones, 2009), for example too

much focus on written text or unclear structure in notes. Issues that still need to be addressed in the

use of PowerPoint in the classroom include gimmicky presentations with too much colour and/or

graphics at the expense of content, or the tendency to speak more quickly as a teacher writing often

moderates the pace of a lecture.

Social media

Unlike mobile devices or PowerPoint social media was not designed for business, rather for

communication across the miles as our world has become smaller and people more migrant. According

to Digital Trends (2014), social media entered the scene in the early 1970s where it began as emails via

Bulletin Board System (BBS). Users dialed in through a modem that exchanged data through phone lines

in order to interact through the internet. More recent developments have led to Ellisons (2007)

definition of social networking sites (SNS) as follows:

8 Assignment #2

We dene social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or

semi-public prole within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a

connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the

system.

Using this definition the first real SNS was SixDegrees which was launched in 1997. Since then various

other social networking sites have come and gone, amongst the most well-known and sustainable are

Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and MySpace.

One of the major pedagogical issues to overcome in the use of SNS in education is explained by

the difference between a digital natives and digital immigrants. McCarroll & Curran (2013) define

digital natives as those who were born and raised with technology, i.e. our students, and digital

immigrants as those who have had to learn technology as adults, i.e. most teachers. This means that

teachers are often reluctant to learn to use technology that the students are already familiar with and,

as a result, do not use potentially valuable educational tools such as blogs or wikis that are able to

support collaborative learning. SNS fall into the category of Web 2.0 technology as they allow students

to be active participants in their learning through the promotion of collaboration and knowledge

sharing. Like all tools classed as Web 2.0 there are four changes that need to be made if SNS is to be

incorporated into education successfully (Mc Carroll & Curran, 2013).

The Web as a Platform

Rather than providing education about computers, students need to be educated on their use of

the web. They need to be taught digital citizenship so that they can responsibly share and publish

information, reference learning materials and assess and collaborate with teachers and other students.

This shift towards the constructivist approach, where students investigate and develop their knowledge,

has made the knowledge of how to find information as important as the actual knowing of it.
9 Assignment #2

Harnessing Collective Intelligence

Students are encouraged to collaborate and share their knowledge in order to contribute to an

overall product. Through the process they do as much giving of information as taking and become more

active participants in their own learning experience. The teachers role becomes one of providing an

infrastructure to support the newly empowered students as they take charge of their own learning.

Rich User Experiences

The variety of resources available on the web is impressive. These resources combined with

more traditional classroom lessons provides a much richer educational experience for the students and

for the teacher. Further, it has been suggest that SNS in particular might be useful in for students

needing to adapt to a new social and/or educational setting (Ryan, 2011).

Data is the Next Intel Inside

Due to the ease of contributions to Web 2.0 more information becomes available and existing

information continues to be developed. Though editing rights may make some of the information

unreliable, as more and more teachers become involved in creating Web 2.0 materials it improves in

quality, reliability and availability.

As has been the case with the previous two technological tools designed for business but used in

education, teacher training in social networking is critical to ensure that those with limited knowledge

are aware of how to use SNS in the classroom safely and effectively. Mc Carroll and Curran (2013) go as

far as to say it is obvious that the Web 2.0 medium will only be as good as the educational strategy that

it becomes integrated into and this resonates with the experience of teachers in the classroom who are

concerned that rather than being used as an educational tool, students will use SNS as a distraction or
10 Assignment #2

even worse, an avenue for cyberbulling. In addition to further training, policy needs to be developed to

ensure that students and teachers have clear instructions on the manner of use of SNS in the classroom.

Conclusion

It was the purpose of this paper to show that it is not the design purpose of a technological tool

that determines its usefulness in education, rather the pedagogy applied to the use of the tool. I have

discussed the issues of pedagogy affecting the effective incorporation of Bring Your Own Devices,

PowerPoint and Social Networking Sites in this paper and have found that not only are these tools of

great potential use, but that with the correct pedagogical consideration they all support the 21st century

skills that the education system is currently working towards. They provide opportunities for

collaboration and the independent and differentiated development of student knowledge in addition to

supporting higher order thinking skills and inquiry based learning.

The issue now is to determine the best way to get teachers on board with using these and other

technological tools in a pedagogically sound way. It seems that this task in in the hands of those who

make policy. Firstly, teacher need to be provided with adequate training, time and support if they, as

digital immigrants, are going to keep up with the technological knowhow of the digital natives that they

are teaching. Secondly, clear guidelines at the district, school and classroom levels need to be put into

place to ensure that the responsibilities of digital citizenship are being adhered to. Further research

could focus on the best way to engage teachers in the use of technological tools in the classroom so that

they themselves seek out the training required, and on the development of effective policy to govern

the use of technological tools that promote student independence in a responsible way.
11 Assignment #2

References:

Adams, C. (2006). PowerPoint, habits of mind, and classroom culture. Journal of Curriculum Studies,

38(4), 389-411.

Austin, D. (2009). Beginnings of PowerPoint: A personal technical story. Retrieved from

archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/.../102745695-01-acc.pdf

Bradley, T. (2011). Pros and cons of bringing your own device to work. PCWorld. Retrieved from

http://www.pcworld.com/article/246760/pros_and_cons_of_byod_bring_your_own_device_.ht

ml

Burns-Sardone, N. (2014). Making the case for BYOD instruction in teacher education. Issues in

Informing Science and Information Technology, 11, 191-201. Retrieved from

http://iisit.org/Vol11/IISITv11p191201Sardone0505.pdf

Digital Trends (2014). The history of social networking. Retrieved from

http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-social-networking/#ixzz3ptm6eb4J

Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer

Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Goodwin, R. (2015). The History of Mobile Phones from 1973 to 2008: The handsets that made it ALL

happen. Retrieved from http://www.knowyourmobile.com/nokia/nokia-3310/19848/history-

mobile-phones-1973-2008-handsets-made-it-all-happen

Jones, A.M. (2003). The use and abuse of PowerPoint in teaching and learning in the life science3sP: A

personal overview. E-j Volume 2: November 2003. Retrieved from

http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/voln/beej-2-3.pdf
12 Assignment #2

Mc Carroll, N. & Curran, K. (2013) Social Networking in Education. International Journal of Innovation in

the Digital Economy. 4 (1). pp. 1-15.

Mishra, P. & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for

integrating technology in teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054

Passanisi, J., & Peters, S. (2013, December 10). The powerful computer in your pocket: Using smart

phones in the classroom. EdWeek. Retrieved from

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2013/12/10/fp_passanisi_peters_smartphone.html

The Province of Alberta (2012). Bring your own device: a guide for schools. Retrieved from

https://education.alberta.ca/media/8640236/tech-briefing-byod.pdf

Ryan, S. D., Magro, M. J., & Sharp, J. H. (2011). Exploring educational and cultural adaptation through

social networking sites. Journal of Information Technology Education, 10, 116.

Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational

Review, 57(1), 122.

Tufte, E. R. (2003, September). PowerPoint is evil. Wired, 11(9). Retrieved from

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2_pr.html