In past versions of my educational technology course, I’ve had
students complete “tech projects” in which they learn about
specific technologies and discuss ways they would use the
technologies (or preferably have students use the technology) in
their classroom. This allowed students to select technologies
that they felt might actually be of use to their discipline
rather than learning about the technologies I thought were
important. While my approach above was well-intentioned, I was
unconvinced students were really planning to apply those
technologies to their future teaching. Instead, I believe
students ended up finding technologies very quickly, throwing
together some ideas, rinsing and repeating. I was not happy.
This J-Term, I have taken a bit of a different approach. I am
trying to focus more on “big ideas” of educational technology
(i.e. TPACK, nature of technology, etc). While I am still
exposing students to a lot of different technologies, and plan
to give them ample time to explore “on their own”,