Early in my career when I started teaching without any formal learning on education and theories of knowledge, I used to follow certain elements of behaviorism that mostly include organizing and managing the classroom through various reinforcement techniques. In my early years I used to struggle in finding a balance between my teaching and engaging students. After a certain time I realized that things were not going my way and started planning on strategies to shift my approach towards a more student centered approach. I started emphasizing on lesson planning and understanding how children process the information that shows a strong connection to cognitive theories. This change came when I started my bachelors degree in education and learned the concept of educational psychology. This has helped me to move towards cognitive learning and got to know about children’ cognitive process and clear understanding on why some students struggled with simple concepts. These understanding allowed me to adapt cognitive theories in my teaching.

I remember one incident, when I was teaching in grade 2 and one girl raised a challenging question. Earth is known as a blue planet because its made up of water and you told water has no color  has made me think again about my approach. I realized that teaching is not about delivering  information but it’s about engaging and facilitating their critical thinking. This has led me to move towards a constructivist approach.

Over these years of my teaching career, my beliefs have changed significantly with the experiences. In the initial days I was more focused on delivering content and believed that subject mastery is important to be an effective teacher. With experience in the social sector and working for the improvement of underserved community children’s education has nurtured me the importance of inclusivity and holistic development of children.

  Educational technology has played a crucial role in shaping out the structure of the learning and how learning has to be delivered. Today I see a complete transition from the traditional classroom tools to use of artificial intelligence in designing personalized learning. I see an integration of digital literacy that enhances our teaching and learning. A contemporary definition of education technology could be the use of technology in such a strategic way that helps to improve the engagement, is accessible in an educational setting and enhances the learning outcomes of the child.

Looking at the historical context, educational technology history is quite rich which we can see from the use of slate boards to smart boards. The journey shows a very critical point made by Neil Postman “ all technological changes are a trade off”. This gives an understanding that whatever new innovations offer, it comes with certain challenges. For example, Today we see advancement in digital technologies that has enriched our knowledge through ease of access but it has also introduced a lot of concerns about screen time.

My Understanding and practice of educational technology has been shaped by a rich historical and philosophical context. In Postman’s articlehttp://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf he has mentioned technology being a   “ Faustian bargain” from which I completely agree. I believe educational technology provides a lot of opportunities in terms of what we think, interact and learn but it also widens the gap between those who have and those who have no access to digital. I can relate this to my previous experience working in one of the aspirational districts in India. In order to improve reading literacy we have launched an application called BOLO app that helps students to guide them in reading. But this has led to a lot of challenges as students screen time has increased on the mobile and they have misused it.

To conclude, it’s important we need to take postman’s advice that “ we need to proceed with our eyes open so that we may use technology rather than be used by”. In my opinion everyone should follow these principle when integrating Edtech in his work that should enhance rather than replacing the human experiences of learning.

Welcome to Education Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!