Educational innovation. Education Essay Research Paper

Module Learning Outcomes
1. Critically appraise how education is changing and is likely to change in the 21st Century across a range of educational settings in light of developments in educational technology.
2. Explore and critically evaluate a piece of educational technology for its suitability in a chosen educational setting.
3. Conduct a critical reflection of personal value systems on the use of technology as a pedagogical resource within a 21st century classroom.
4. Demonstrate an ability to communicate clearly and accurately; follow academic conventions appropriate to undergraduate study
Plan -3000 words essay
Criteria 1- Aprox 1000
Criteria 2- Aprox 1000
Criteria 3- Aprox 1000
Criteria 1- A solid Intro - where we are socially at the moment, mention ideas around liquid modernity and how has it changed society. Explore how society has changed, politics, economics and move towards individualised society and how technology has fed into that, introduce the term sustaining technology to explain how technology is used in education at the moment, for example interactive smart boards have replaced chalk boards. linking the changes in society to some of the changes in education, specially focus on higher education (university) and secondary school. If society has become more individualised how do we see that in education? We see it through all the focus on outcome, the way pupils are judged and expected to produce certain outcomes at the end of their educational careers, we see it in personal provision for pupils such as targeted approach through politics, things like the pupil premium, schools market themselves to recruit students and parents in to school which mirror the changes happening in society. How has society changed, how does that impact on education and what is the role of technology within that.
Criteria 2- choose a particular piece of technology and evaluate that, what are the pros and limitation, and then use of that technology in education. After that, Link back to some of the ideas already been discussed in criteria 1, about being individualised and the pressure in education perhaps. Then talk about how you see things in education to do with technology changing in the future, this is where you can mention the current situation with the virus and the impact on education, (might be hard to find academic sources, news articles are fine for this aspect). Keep focusing on higher education and secondary school. We can draw on the current change, as a result of the virus outbreak we are taking online classes using technology such as laptops and facetime to interact with each other, this is likely to bring in changes once the pandemic is over, such as how we are being taught and the use of more technology in the future. Talk about disruptive technology in higher education.
Criteria 3- Personal reflection. Talk about the personal values underpin the use of technology, what do you think about the use of technology, what kind of personal values does it promote, does it in anyway diminish personal values, does it changes the way we interact with each other, does it changes peoples sense of values. What kind of values do we gain or lose etc. Reference Sue Palmer and Marc Prenski to support your thoughts around that.
Conclusions- The importance of technology and the undeniable role of technology, things that have changed and is changing gradually, and how the speed of technology has accelerated in the past months, how do you think it will grow in the future.
Include these important readings
Liquid modernity by Zygmunt Bauman (2000)
Marc Prensky-
Sue Palmer- about dangers of technology
Michael Flavin (2016) Disruptive conduct: the impact of disruptive technologies on social relations in higher education, Innovations in Education and Teaching International

FAQ’s sheet

In the assignment talk about two phases in education which are higher education and secondary education. In criteria 2 the technology I want you to evaluate is a laptop

Educational Innovations

What goes in the introduction?

Refer to a concept, e.g. liquid modernity.

How has technology changed alongside societal changes and link to education. 

Introduce the link between education and technology and bring in liquid modernity, to explain how technology is constantly changing and is increasing individualised.

When you say society has changed and education etc... how far back should we go? And do we discuss a certain amount of major changes which has led us to now?  

We talked about rapid change towards capitalism and individualism (technology plays a significant role in individualism) since the 1980s. You would use the ideas of liquid modernity etc to illustrate this rather than specific policies.

Apart from the one piece of technology we select for criteria 2 to evaluate, do we need to discuss any other pieces of technology as part of criteria 1 or 3? For example, technology in general and how its impacted on education and society or just focus on the one piece of technology?

You might give examples of other forms of technologies, but you will only discuss one type in detail.

For criteria 3, do we refer to technology in general, or do we try and keep about the one we have evaluated beforehand?

Technology generally here but do make links to the form of technology evaluated.

Do we only talk about one piece of technology in Criteria 2? Yes

In criteria 2, do we talk about the piece of technology in general or in one specific phase of education? In a specific phases of education, so for my assignment use higher education and secondary education.

In regards to COVID-19 causing a disruption in society, would that make using technology such as BBB and Microsoft teams and Skype disruptive technologies or are they still sustaining technologies? I think it is the situation that has acted as a disruption and ‘forced’ us to use technology in a disruptive manner. You could make an interesting point that often technology leads the disruptive, but our very unusual situation has reversed this.

When talking about how society has changed, would you go in depth about how there is increased marketisation in education? I think it’s a few sentences really – the focus is technology but info about marketization/economy/societal changes give context.

When to include a discussion about sustaining/disruptive technologies?

I think this could go in many different places in the assignment – there’s no absolute right or wrong but I (personally) would make three points:

Technology has largely been used in a sustaining fashion

The current situation has acted as a disruption causing us really adapt practice and technology has played a significant role

Therefore, looking ahead technology may well play more a disruptive role – do look at the PPT for an explanation of these terms.

Do we discuss both sustainable and disruptive technology in the first part of the assignment? Do we just discuss them in brief, or do we need to go into a lot of detail?

I can’t give a definitive answer to this – some people will find the concept of sustaining/disruptive technologies more interesting/useful than others. Personally I think they’re useful terms to help explore where we are in education and how things might change. I wouldn’t expect just a brief mention of sustaining/disruptive.