Elements of Educational Technology

Elements of Educational Technology

As I dug into AECT's Elements of Educational Technology paper, I was pleasantly surprised by what I got out of it. For one, it was interesting to see how interrelated the various elements described were. This does make sense, but I was impressed by the time taken to make the elements 'hang together' effectively. I don't believe I learned a significant amount of new information, but certainly looking at the "Facilitating" and "Learning" concepts in more depth reinforced some of my views. That was encouraging.

I believe that document has stood the test of time fairly well. If it were written today, some additional details about 'digital citizenship' would likely be included. There was quite a bit implied in the "Ethical Practice" section about the importance of ethical behavior by ed tech professionals (modeling for our students); it's likely that more attention would be placed on copyright, intellectual property ownership, plagiarism, etc. if it were written today.

It was interesting to see that the approach that was reinforced in the Learning and Facilitating areas was that of a student-centered learning environment. While there was no direct reference to technology reinforcing and facilitating  '21st century learning' concepts like collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity, I still got the distinct impression that those types of concepts were compatible with the elements defined by AECT. In summary, this was a well written paper that accurately described the elements of an educational technology professional.