Pedagogy First...then Technology

One thing brought up in discussion this week is the importance of a solid foundation of pedagogy before introducing technology. This is something that - after a lot of work this semester understanding pedagogy and instructional design - that I seem to back.

Here's the reason...

Pedagogy and the tools that a teacher uses to create a class and design a framework are like the skeleton for the course. All of the bits and pieces of pedagogy seem to be the backbone for all things that get added to a course to enhance it. A course wouldn't be successful if it didn't have a solid foundation of concepts and educational pieces.

Technology can be successfully integrated into a classroom when the pedagogy...or course structure and content...are solid. I honestly think that the impact of the technology is greater when you can enhance your concepts and pieces of instruction through that technology verses having the technology teach the student. I think that if you let the technology teach the student you run the risk of having pieces of information be skewed or misrepresented.

I think that there is a tendency these days to rely heavily on technology without giving it a lot of thought. For some educators, the more technology the better. But I believe that the classroom isn't successful if you rely strictly on technology. As a student who has gone through schools all of my life in technology driven atmospheres, I can see now that those technologies wouldn't have impacted me nearly as much if I couldn't make educational connections to the content that I was studying at the time I was introduced to that technology.

Technology is a powerful tool...when used correctly. There are lots of positives to the use of technology and I foresee that I will be using it extensively when I enter a classroom as an educator myself. But after learning what I have learned about the importance of good instructional design, I now know that I need to be conscientious about how I use that technology in relation to what I'm trying to teach.