Many of us associate educational technology with computer-assisted teaching and learning, which makes sense when you consider our current educational system, particularly in the post-covid scenario, where the majority of educational content is consumed online via computers, phones, and other gadgets, including this class of EC&I-833. Without a doubt, it has made our lives easier on so many levels that even after covid, many students prefer online education over offline . But the more I used it, the more I wondered, what does education technology stand for? Is there even a definition? and prompted me to Google what is education technology? The definition I found was “Educational technology (also known as edutech or edtech) is the use of computer hardware, software, educational theory, and practise to facilitate learning.” Well google almost says the same thing.

Instead of driving to a library to find my answers, my natural instinct was to Google it. Isn’t it amazing how Google has become synonymous with search? Knowledge is no longer limited to books or any one particular source; people can learn anything from anywhere in the world, even if they don’t have access to a good teacher in their area. We don’t even use the word search anymore we just google it. This made me wonder if Google was specifically designed with education in mind. The answer is obviously no, Google was officially launched in 1998 with a mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” and Much later, our academic community became aware that information available on Google could be formally used in our instructional process without much difficulty.

photo link – https://elearninginfographics.com/timeline-of-educational-technology-in-schools-infographic/

But what was life like before Google, and how did we search and learn about things other than books? so I  felt like going back in time and learn about the origin and the early days of educational technology because history always has lessons to teach us. I read Tony Bates – A short history of educational technology where I found a brief explanation of how education technology began and evolved throughout its history over  different time periods, initially the means of teaching was entirely based on oral and written instruction even for written instruction there were no blackboards till 18th century and the most interesting thing I discovered which also supports my theory and understanding of education technology is that many of the technology that we have used in education was not specifically developed for education but for other purposes like for the military or business, for example- The United States Army began using overhead projectors for training at the end of World War II, and their use became common for lecturing until it was largely replaced by electronic projectors and presentational software such as Powerpoint around 1990. In addition to this Michael Molenda – Historical foundations  also states that “Research and practice in educational technology are rooted in a primordial human drive to find ways of teaching in ways that are more efficient”  Also that “Every civilization has developed formal methods of education more efficacious than the trial-and-error of everyday living”

After going through these readings , I came to the conclusion that educational technology is all about effective instruction. We live in a technological world, and whatever technology we have incorporated into education up to this point has only one purpose: to evolve our mode of instruction and make it as effective as possible for everyone, even if that means using parts of technology that are not even intended for education and keep coming up with new tools to achieve it.

Thank you!