Educational technology can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense, and broad sense refers to the sum of all technical means and methods adopted by human beings in educational activities. It can be divided into tangible (materialized form) and intangible (intelligent form). The technology of materialized form refers to the scientific knowledge solidified and embodied in tangible objects, including all the equipment, facilities, equipment and corresponding software that can be used for education, from traditional teaching AIDS such as blackboards and chalk to electronic computers and satellite communications. Intelligent technology refers to scientific knowledge expressed in abstract form and acting on educational practice in functional form, such as systematic method.
With the rapid development of information technology, multimedia and network are gradually popularized among members of society, which also enriches the content of educational technology. We call the educational technology represented by multimedia and network modern educational technology.
We believe that modern educational technology can change educational culture mainly based on the following points:
1. Modern educational technology is an intermediary structure.
From the perspective of cognition, the process of human cognition is a continuous cycle from practice-perceptual knowledge-rational knowledge-practice. But in practice, it is not a direct process for people to realize rational understanding or rational understanding of practice. Is there any intermediate link in this process? That's right. The research results in recent years show that educational technology knowledge is the intermediate link between people's understanding of education and educational practice, and it is a bridge connecting education, teaching theory or experience with educational teaching practice.
From a realistic point of view, the objective world is naturally unsatisfactory. In order to survive, human beings are determined to change the world with their own actions. But the objective law is independent of people's will, and it follows its own path, so people's goals will encounter difficulties. The former conforms to the law and the latter to the purpose. In practice, what conforms to the law does not necessarily conform to the purpose, and what conforms to the purpose does not necessarily conform to the law. In order to achieve harmony and unity, an intermediary structure is needed, and educational technology practice is such an intermediary structure in the educational process.
2. Modern educational technology has changed the distribution form of information resources.
The wide application of modern information technology has changed the distribution form of information resources in society, thus changing the form of education. Teaching under the network environment shakes the authoritative position of teachers, and students can get more, faster and more vivid information from the network than textbooks. Students can use a variety of information sources, and teachers only play a role as one of them. As political economy says, when the distribution mode of means of production changes, the relations of production also change. Advanced teaching methods make it very easy to learn difficult subjects in the past, which is bound to be welcomed by students. Students have higher requirements for school teaching methods and begin to get tired of traditional boring teaching methods. Teachers are required to adopt more efficient, flexible, interesting and diversified teaching methods. Therefore, it challenges the role of teachers and urges teachers to change from imparting knowledge to designers, organizers and promoters of students' learning activities.
3. Modern educational technology makes multi-directional interaction possible.
From BBS to blog and then to podcast era, it has brought new opportunities for audio and video communication, diversified communication subjects, and the emergence of new communication terminals, which has facilitated the audience, but it also means that new communication channels and modes will have an impact on the education field.
With the maturity of broadband technology, network video is destined to play an increasingly important role in the field of network communication. Both NASA and AOL have developed mature online video tools. AOL said that about 5 million people in the United States watched its one-day live concert through online video tools that day. In addition, media companies have also begun to intervene in this field, from search giants including Google and Yahoo to traditional printing and broadcasting institutions, to understand what kind of online video content online viewers need. At present, the software giant Microsoft is also paying close attention to the development of this field as a powerful tool to build a community. So far, Microsoft has established a website with 19 video channels, providing more than 500 video clips, including impromptu speeches, Windows operating systems and MSN services.
In China, judging from the recent reports of Shenzhou VI, on the day of Shenzhou VI's launch, China's three major portals launched a fierce news war as usual. However, a website's unique trick "live online video" not only makes the website get the most attention in this news war, but also makes the "MYSEE Live Network" which provides streaming media technology behind it enter the media's field of vision. Undoubtedly, online video is infiltrating into various fields, and it is also maturing from immaturity. The synchronous transmission of text, picture, audio and video is realized. In such a technical environment, real interactive learning becomes possible.
When new teaching modes based on new ideas and new technologies appear and are tried by people (this attempt depends on the inside and outside), people's original educational culture-mainstream culture is still working, so those teaching modes promoted by new ideas and new technologies are regarded as the "second culture" in education. When conditions are ripe, people adopt more and more new models, secondary culture becomes a part of people's mainstream culture, and school education culture is changed.
Second, the current situation analysis
In the past five years, the information environment construction of basic education in our province has developed rapidly.
The hardware environment has been greatly improved. There are nearly 200,000 computers in the province, especially in high schools, where the average student-to-student ratio has reached 12: 1. Campus network1more than 400; There are more than 2800 satellite ground receiving stations. There are also many multifunctional audio-visual classrooms, electronic lesson preparation rooms, electronic reading rooms and so on. Yangquan City and Jinzhong City have built metropolitan area networks, Datong City and Taiyuan City are also under construction, and Jishan County and Changzhi County have realized the county-wide "class-to-class communication".
L education and teaching resources are constantly enriched. Recommended by the Provincial Department of Education to primary and secondary schools in the province every year.
Electronic audio-visual digital resources basically cover all disciplines, with about 2300 varieties. 1993, our province issued a charging policy for audio-visual teaching materials. Starting from 12, our preliminary statistics show that the funds for purchasing software in primary and secondary schools in the province are around 600 million. There are also many resources that are purchased and integrated by cities and counties and independently developed by schools. China Education Television also provides educational and teaching resources to primary and secondary schools below rural towns free of charge every day.
L Teachers' computer knowledge and skills are gradually popularized, and their application ability is constantly improved.
First, the primary and intermediate computer skills training for teachers organized by the education department is widely carried out; Second, the professional training of teachers in information technology disciplines reached 3532; Third, all localities and schools have organized different levels of computer knowledge and ability training with different requirements.
The research of primary and secondary schools has a certain foundation. Modern educational technology at or above the provincial level
During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, inspectors undertook 27 topics of the key topic of the Ministry of Education, Theory and Practice of Learning and Teaching Based on Modern Information Technology Environment. Undertake the 15 project approved by the Central Pavilion; Undertake six sub-topics of the national key project "Research on the Development of Educational Technology in the Process of Informatization" of the National Society of Educational Technology; He has undertaken 48 sub-topics such as "Research on the Goals, Approaches and Countermeasures of Promoting the Informatization of Basic Education in our province", the key topic of the Tenth Five-Year Plan of educational science in our province. The research of these topics, from theory to practice, laid a good foundation for organizing the implementation of the 13 150 project.
(Quoted from Director Zhu's speech at the kick-off meeting of Shanxi Province 13 150 project in May 2005)
In this case, some areas or schools still have the following phenomena:
First, pay more attention to "electricity" than "teaching"
Due to the separation of science and technology and narrow understanding of educational technology, teaching and research institutions and audio-visual education institutions have long been independent of each other and do not cross each other. On the one hand, the reorganization of institutions has caused a great waste of funds, equipment and personnel, leading to the uselessness of educational science, which is empty and not as practical as educational technology. For a long time, some audio-visual educators have been ignoring the in-depth study and research on the process of subject education and teaching activities, and always think that this is the business of subject teachers. The task of audio-visual education workers is only to maintain and keep audio-visual education equipment. As a result, audio-visual education workers become "equipment maintenance workers" and "warehouse keepers" in schools, and even cannot enter the series of teachers in the school establishment, which can only be counted as "teaching assistants". On the other hand, as far as the personnel in the field of educational technology research and practice are concerned, the lack of quality and training in education, psychology and philosophy has become the bottleneck for the healthy development of educational technology science. Because they are committed to promoting audio-visual education, they often use the means and methods of audio-visual education to find problems. It seems that the means of audio-visual education is the solution to all problems, thus falling into the situation of putting the cart before the horse in scientific research, rather than the normal procedure of "choosing solutions according to problems". As a result, it has never been able to establish its due position in the development of educational practice and educational theory system. This is an important reason why audio-visual education can't go deep into the classroom.
Second, emphasize "hard" over "soft"
As we mentioned before, the unique technical structure of human society includes two aspects: on the one hand, it is a tool system other than human beings; On the other hand, people's skills in using tools. The two-way development of internal and external aspects, mutual coordination and mutual transformation, promoted the rapid development of human technology, which led to the two-way development of social modernization and human modernization.
In the past, tools were all extensions of the human body, and computers were extensions of the human brain. An important feature of computer that is different from previous material production tools is that "software" appears in the tools. Software is the technology of knowledge form, the externalization of human thinking program, a special symbol system and an executable program. The appearance of "software" is an extremely profound historical change in the function of human symbol system! It is unprecedented in the past technology to symbolize and "software" the intellectual operation behavior in the human brain and make it an operating program that can instruct the machine to execute automatically. Its function is to greatly enhance the ability of human beings to process information, reduce the burden of mental work, replace many technical performances of hardware equipment with more and more advanced software programs, and reduce the requirements for hardware equipment. The relationship between hardware and software in tools is just like the relationship between human physiological structure and psychological structure. The former is congenital and difficult to change, while the latter is acquired and easy to change. Today, with the rapid development of information technology, it is the general trend to replace the functions of hardware with the development of software, which can not only effectively avoid a large number of intractable "high-level garbage" brought by the rapid upgrade of hardware equipment, but more importantly, the value of knowledge itself is also rapidly improving, which is a new feature and mystery in the era of knowledge economy! An important law of the development of contemporary information industry is that the software industry leads the hardware industry, and the development of the software industry depends on the research, prediction and experiment of the future behavior of software users. Following this law, in order to improve the efficiency of school education technology investment, we must proceed from the goal and function of school education modernization, design it as a whole and implement it step by step. This obviously requires the organic combination of technical experts and educational experts, especially to study the future behavior and future needs of students and teachers under the multimedia and network environment. The full play of computer functions depends not only on the best collocation of software and hardware, but also on the user's control ability of software and hardware. Obviously, in the process of rapid development of educational informatization, correcting the bias of attaching importance to hardware over software and correctly handling the proportion of software, hardware and teacher training in educational technology investment is not only an important policy issue to ensure the healthy and rapid development of educational informatization in our province, but also an important academic issue that needs to be discussed from the perspective of educational technology theory.
Third, pay more attention to "machine" than "net".
With the expansion of contemporary information technology to the field of education and the more and more extensive application of multimedia computers in the teaching process, the construction of campus network has been put on the agenda. Judging from the experience of educational informatization development in developed countries today, it is an inevitable trend for school educational informatization to develop from stand-alone to network. The so-called networking is not just the networking of computers, but the networking of human wisdom! What does the emergence of the Internet mean? This in itself is an extremely profound philosophical anthropology problem. In the past, we often said that the computer is a tool of thinking and an extension of the human brain. But the capacity and function of a single computer are limited after all, and it can't be compared with the human brain with great potential. However, through the interconnection of computers around the world, the Internet brings together the wisdom of all mankind in ancient and modern times into a huge and complex network system covering the whole world. This is really an extension of the human brain, which not only extends the individual's brain and thinking activities, but also creates an externalized and rapidly developing whole. In the near future, people from all over the world will be able to study the best courses in their own homes, study any subject and be taught by the best teachers in the world. "Turning this ideal into reality as soon as possible is a great historical mission shouldered by today's educational technicians. Network is only the form of educational informatization, and rich educational resources and convenient access are the content and essence of educational informatization. In this sense, the integration of educational resources is more important and more difficult than the construction of campus network itself. This should also attract enough attention from the educational technology community in our province.
Fourth, pay more attention to teaching than learning.
The relationship between teaching and learning is an important basic theoretical issue in contemporary educational philosophy. Looking back on the course of western educational research and experiment in the twentieth century, we can clearly see an extremely important turn: from teaching research to learning research, and have made a series of breakthrough achievements in the study of students' learning laws. More importantly, the information-based social environment, combined with the research results of students' learning rules, is creating all kinds of high-level, personalized and efficient new learning models. How to adapt and control this new learning environment and learning mode as soon as possible has become the most intense competition in the world stage today.
Thematic learning website is a platform for students' autonomous learning under the network environment. Shanxi Audio-visual Education Center organized four technical trainings for key schools in the province, but most schools did not take action, especially in rural areas, which was an important work during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period.
Fifth, attach importance to science and technology over humanities.
Too optimistic about the prospect of modern educational technology development, lack of deep understanding and research on the possible negative consequences and negative effects.
From the nature of the subject, modern educational technology is by no means a pure natural science and technology subject, but a unified whole of education, technology and art. Today, modern educational technology is entering a new stage with multimedia and network as the main body. Not only the scientific content is greatly improved, but also the humanistic background is rapidly expanding, which is an extremely severe challenge to the quality of modern educational technicians. Most people see the former, but they often don't see the latter. Therefore, in the selection of personnel, they often only pay attention to their technical level and ignore their humanistic cultivation. This short-sighted view of employing people will bring extremely serious harm to the future development of educational technology if it is not corrected as soon as possible. Because if we look at technology from the perspective of social modernization, the influence of technology on the process of human civilization is a "double-edged sword", which can not only benefit mankind, but also harm mankind. Especially in the field of education aimed at cultivating people, we must be cautious in the application of technology and must not be blindly optimistic. We must fully estimate the possible negative impact of modern educational technology on education and take practical preventive measures. Nowadays, educational technology is rising from educational means to the core of educational reform, and will lead the trend of educational modernization in such an important field. If you only know technology and lack humanistic education, you can only become a craftsman at best, but not an educator. Especially in the face of the impact and temptation of market economy, craftsmen who lack humanistic education can easily become short-sighted utilitarians, which obviously cannot adapt to the historical mission undertaken by modern educational technicians.
Sixth, pay more attention to technology than design.
In the process of using educational technology, teachers often use media for the purpose of using it, rather than making choices according to teaching objectives, teaching contents and students' characteristics. Other teachers use educational technology when the conventional method is simple, but the result is very complicated, or when it is necessary to cultivate students' imagination, teachers provide students with concrete images, which violates the laws of education and creates educational and teaching problems, rather than solving educational and teaching problems, which runs counter to the goal of educational technology. With the popularization of educational technology and the increasing complexity of educational problems, educational technology does not require the use of technology in education, but requires attention to technology in education and teaching practice, with the aim of solving educational and teaching problems and promoting students' learning and development. No single technical component can always be a solution to practical education and teaching problems. Therefore, it is necessary for educational technology to design an overall solution to the problem in a broad technical sense.
Three. Action suggestion
Now we discuss how to use modern educational technology to promote the transformation of school education culture.
1. Create a working environment for teachers to master and use modern educational technology.
On April 4, 2005, the Ministry of Education issued a notice, deciding to launch the national educational technology capacity-building plan for primary and secondary school teachers throughout the country. Its purpose is to implement the action plan of education revitalization approved by the State Council for 2003-2007, cooperate with the curriculum reform of basic education and the implementation of modern distance education plan in rural primary and secondary schools, and improve the educational technology ability of primary and secondary school teachers.
The purpose of the national educational technology capacity-building plan for primary and secondary school teachers is: based on the Standards of Educational Technology Capacity for Primary and Secondary School Teachers (Trial), with the aim of comprehensively improving teachers' educational technology application ability and promoting the effective application of technology in teaching, to establish a teacher educational technology training and examination certification system, to organize and carry out educational technology training with the effective integration of information technology and subject teaching as the main content, and to comprehensively improve teachers' ability to implement quality education.
The plan is implemented in accordance with the principle of "overall planning, step-by-step implementation, combining learning with application, and paying attention to practical results". Since 2005, some provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) have been organized to carry out pilot projects first. On the basis of existing experience, it has been launched nationwide since 2006. By the end of 2007, all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) had adopted various ways and means, so that the vast majority of primary and secondary school teachers generally received at least 50 hours of training in the application ability of educational technology, and participated in the national examination and certification of educational technology proficiency. Schools of all levels and types in our province should seize this opportunity and comprehensively improve the ability of teachers in our province to use educational technology. For example, actively create conditions to carry out school-based research under the network environment. School-based research is an important means to promote teachers' professionalization and change school education culture. The application of educational technology under the network environment is not only the purpose of school-based research, but also the method and means of school-based research. The combination of the two is school-based research under the network environment. Because the most important feature of network is interaction, it is an effective form to support school-based research. Moreover, school-based training under the network environment is conducive to overcoming the discourse hegemony of powerful groups. In the virtual environment, teachers can tell the truth better, participate actively as the main body of training, discuss anytime and anywhere, and share the results with others.
2. Pursuing the teaching state of oral and writing under the background of modern educational technology.
Judging from the actual situation of information technology education application in China, there are many one-sidedness. When it comes to computer-aided education, it seems to be developing courseware. In fact, courseware is only a part of information education system. Courseware is essentially an integral part of a structured teaching system with clear goals. Teaching process is a powerful learning management system, which needs the support of a variety of information tools and a large number of information resources. The biggest disadvantage of courseware is its strong presupposition and structure. The prevalence of courseware makes teachers' free and vivid lectures in front of the blackboard gone forever, the direct communication between teachers and students at any time gone forever, and the continuous and orderly teaching art of teachers gone forever, and so on. Modern educational technology not only can't effectively support teaching reform, which is not conducive to teachers' creativity, but also makes teachers doubt the effectiveness of the application and teaching of modern educational technology.
In fact, the use of teaching resources does not have to be integrated into the courseware. Educational technology can be picked up and used when it is used, and put aside when it is not used, just like traditional teaching AIDS and wall charts. The best way to use modern educational technology in the classroom is that you can still speak and write in the new environment. At present, there has been a breakthrough in this regard. First, it is similar to Z+Z intelligent education platform software. The feature of this software is that drawing and writing symbols are very easy, but writing is inconvenient. The other is an electronic whiteboard.
The electronic whiteboard is the improvement and development of the teaching system, so the computer and projector in the original system are still indispensable. It is precisely because of the emergence of electronic whiteboard that this system should be said to be the most perfect, creative and expressive teaching system today.
So what is the function of electronic whiteboard? Simply put, it is a display screen that can be remotely controlled. All kinds of words, charts and figures can be displayed on the board, and computers can also operate directly on the board. It can also be said to be a new "blackboard". You can write and draw on it at will, and you can erase what you have written and drawn immediately if necessary.
With this electronic whiteboard, teachers seem to have returned to the vivid state of lecturing in front of the blackboard in the past, and teachers have become the core of teaching. From then on, they don't have to chat on it for a while, and then they will run down to operate the computer. Instead, they can easily operate the computer directly on the whiteboard. According to the pre-made courseware, they can clearly show what they want students to know on the whiteboard at any time. What they want students to remember or emphasize, they can write, draw or write on the whiteboard at will. The teacher's improvisation during the lecture can also be left on the whiteboard, which not only ensures the continuity of the lecture, but also makes the lecture have a strong sense of rhythm. In particular, because most of the content teachers have pre-made courseware, they just need to tune it out when giving lectures, which gives teachers enough time to play their teaching art, explain and repeat key and difficult questions repeatedly, and ask or answer students' questions at any time. Therefore, the teaching is lively, the key and difficult problems can be solved, and the students' interest in learning is improved.
In front of the electronic whiteboard, students are the biggest beneficiaries. First of all, during the teacher's lecture, students can ask questions about what has been said. Teachers can operate the computer freely, tune out what they have said and explain it to students again. Even students can operate on the whiteboard by themselves to achieve the interactive effect of teaching and learning, so that students can deepen their understanding and sort out problems. Secondly, students can relieve the pain of taking notes in the past, that is, students can not take notes in class. As long as you listen attentively, everything the teacher says after class, including the key points emphasized by the teacher, what he writes temporarily, or what he improvises, can be preserved as long as there is something on the board, and students can record it.
3. Establish the development direction of combining educational science with educational technology.
Compared with the application in the natural field, technology is much slower and more cautious when it enters the field directly related to people's life activities. When technology enters the extremely complex field of humanities education, the arguments and obstacles encountered are more intense than any other field! Education does not belong to the production of material materials, but belongs to the reproduction and re-creation of human beings themselves. The object of education is not things but people, not only people with life and vitality, but also people with thoughts, self-awareness and independent activities. The more important feature of educational activities is that teachers, as educators, do not directly change students' physical (material) state, or even have direct physical (material) contact with students, but only influence students' thoughts and emotions through language, speech, expression and manner, change students' internal cognitive structure and emotional will structure, and promote and influence the development of students' physical and mental structure and social practice structure through these psychological structures. Therefore, the technical tools that first appeared in educational activities are not the extension of human limbs, but the material means of transmitting information to students such as books, blackboards and chalk. The rapid development of industrial technology in modern times has made brilliant achievements in the field of material production, but it has little influence on the education field produced by human beings themselves. It was not until the audio-visual technology developed at the beginning of this century appeared in the mass media that it was quickly introduced into the teaching and education process. This historical fact itself is thought-provoking. It enlightens people that the development of educational technology should not only follow the law of technological development, but also follow the law of educational development.
In recent years, we have been emphasizing the integration of information technology and subject teaching. However, the actual effect is that the use of information technology is often outside the curriculum objectives. The reason is the lack of understanding of the true meaning of "integration". In fact, the true meaning of "integration" is completely consistent with the broad definition of educational technology. Integration refers not only to the materialized form of modern educational technology-information technology (including media technology), but also to the intelligent form of modern educational technology-educational science. The so-called integration of information technology and curriculum means that information technology fundamentally changes the traditional concept of teaching and learning and the corresponding learning objectives, methods and evaluation means through the organic combination of curriculum and subject teaching. Among them, organic refers to the application of intelligent technology, which refers to scientific knowledge expressed in abstract form and applied to educational practice in functional form, such as system methods and system design principles. These are often the fields of educational science research, so we should combine educational science with educational technology and integrate the system and resources (including human and material resources).
4. Pay attention to the research of educational technology and teachers' professional growth paradigm.
A remarkable phenomenon in daily teaching life is that those teachers who have experienced rapid professional growth have also performed well in using modern educational technology. And those teachers whose professional growth is relatively slow, even if the school is equipped with computers for free, are often mainly used for playing games and chatting. They seldom use these means to promote their professional development. In other words, whether modern educational technology can promote the change of school education culture is closely related to the teacher's professional growth paradigm.
The research on teachers' professional growth paradigm has made some remarkable achievements. According to the conclusions of relevant research at home and abroad and our research on the professional growth of nearly 65,438+0,000 teachers, we think that the main factors affecting the professional growth of teachers are: (65,438+0) sense of responsibility, sense of accomplishment and sense of efficacy; (2) mode of thinking (whether you can find problems from yourself instead of blaming objectivity); (3) Do you often conduct teaching and research with your peers? (4) Whether the work is challenging (working on the edge of ability). Among them, some characteristics are congenital, and some are cultivated through changes in the external environment. At present, we should pay attention to exploring the effective paradigm of teachers' professional growth through school-based research.
In a word, through the above measures, modern educational technology can really become teachers' daily teaching behavior, thus promoting the reform of school education culture.