Introduction to educational technology
Educational technology is the technology of educating people and their innovation and integration, and its core is teaching design technology and curriculum development technology. Yang Kaicheng sees the essence of educational technology from the essence of technology.
Educational technology is a research and moral practice to promote learning and improve performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technical processes and resources.
This definition expresses the research object of educational technology as a series of theoretical and practical problems about "learning process" and "learning resources", which changes the previous formulation of "teaching process" and embodies the great change of modern teaching concept from teaching-centered to learning-centered, from imparting knowledge to developing students' learning ability.
Learning process is a cognitive process in which learners acquire knowledge and skills through interaction with information and environment. Learning resources are all kinds of information and environmental conditions to be used in the learning process. The new teaching theory requires students to change from passive recipients of external stimuli to active learners who can actively process information, and teachers should provide information resources and learning environment that can help and promote students' learning. Starting from the needs of social development and human development in the 2/kloc-0 century, we should build a social education system that can support comprehensive learning, autonomous learning, collaborative learning, creative learning and lifelong learning.
Characteristics of educational technology
Educational technology is not the general application of a certain teaching method, it includes the theory and practice of three concepts (learner-centered, relying on resources and using systematic methods) that are comprehensively applied to education and teaching. Educational technology attaches importance to the analysis and study of learners' characteristics (such as behavior level, ability, knowledge base, age characteristics, etc.). ), because the learner's situation has a direct impact on many educational decisions such as choosing goals, determining the rhythm, and determining the nature of evaluation. In educational technology, solving problems depends on developing and utilizing learning resources, promoting personalized learning and improving people's learning quality. Learning resources include information, personnel, materials (teaching media software), equipment (hardware), skills and environment, which is a complex system. In order to make them produce overall functions and play an excellent role in learning, it is necessary to realize the optimal combination through system design. Therefore, it involves a series of educational development work, effective teaching resources development and effective teaching process design.
Educational technology attaches importance to the development, application, management, design and learners' learning experience of all learning resources or learning media called human beings, and emphasizes the scientific and systematic method to analyze and integrate the process of "teaching and learning". For example, teaching activities are designed in a systematic way. Through demand analysis, content analysis and learner analysis, operable progressive learning objectives are formulated, and appropriate strategies (processes, methods and media) are selected according to these learning objectives, thus forming a complete teaching and learning design scheme, which is evaluated and summarized in the trial of the scheme, and necessary adjustments and modifications are made as needed. This systematic process provides a way to optimize teaching activities (or learning experience).
The basic guiding ideology of applying educational technology to solve teaching problems can be summarized as the comprehensive application of three concepts: learner-centered, relying on resources and using systematic methods. Its basic practical principle is to identify the problem first, find out the essence of the problem to be solved, and then study and design the solution according to the essence of the problem. Its operating program is implemented according to the procedures and steps of the system method.
The operation process can be divided into six steps, namely, identification, design, selection, implementation, evaluation, modification and popularization. It can also be summarized as two basic links, identifying problems and solving problems, that is, first determine what kind of problems (or needs) to solve, and then find solutions according to the nature of the problems. The process is shown in figure 1.4. In application practice, every step needs to use relevant theories, knowledge and technology to support the systematic method of educational development.
It can be said that in fact, educational technology has already existed in various educational and teaching activities. Whether it is class teaching, individual teaching or group cooperative learning, it is more or less related to some teaching technology content using media and related methods and strategies that do not include real media.
For example, traditional educational media involved in daily teaching activities, such as printed textbooks, blackboards, chalk, laboratories, teaching AIDS, wall charts, etc., and modern educational media equipped by schools with better conditions, such as slide projectors, TV and video teaching, computer-aided teaching, satellite education systems, etc. At the same time, teachers often prepare lessons before class, choose and use corresponding teaching procedures and methods according to different teaching contents and students' characteristics, and test the teaching effect and students' learning situation. , all belong to the teaching technology content such as related methods and strategies that do not contain real media.
Therefore, all educational activities involve the content of educational technology. Although educational technology itself is not a strange thing, it exists in daily teaching activities. However, educational development and reform, as a special discipline, a field with fruitful research results, a set of effective methods and professional knowledge and skills with great potential to improve educational effect, have not been recognized, familiar and mastered by all educators, and need more study, use and further promotion.