Some Thoughts about Technology-learning as an “IT Insider”

This blog has to do with an old struggle of mine, or I could say it’s what we are learning in class dragged me back to the old question that I used to raise to myself and never found an answer. (For the old question, refer here)

When I started my graduate-level study in Instructional Technology here, I read a lot of literatures of what this field is about, how could it be defined as an academic field, and who do graduates of this program fit into the society and function well as part of it. In another word, I was questioning what does a successful instructional technologist do and how can s/he do it well. To raise this question to myself, I was originally planning to know how to devote my time and energy. I investigated into the history of Instructional Technology and current issues and trend, and found that it is not a question that could be answered with a couple of sentences or an outlined sheet of paper. Actually, many theorists and practitioners inside the field have been devoted to delineate the field. It does cover the field of education and technology, not not only that. This illustrates why this field is hard to define because the tow terms we just mentioned themselves were vague in nature.

The question about how to define instructional technology as a field leads to another question of how to be an instructional technologist. If that term sounds a little bragging, let’s use the term “insider” to refer ourselves for right now. Wether an IT insider should master all the available technologies and how s/he masters it was the core of my discussion. In Dr. Yuen’s class, we were introduced by lots of good technologies and from the information provided, we can tell that most of these technologies have some common feature such as small, simple, online, user-friendly, well-functioning, easy-to-use, and free. People can get these technological terms easily and diffuse them into their instructional systems and activities. most of these tools were designed for a certain specific instructional need or a set of several instructional needs. And because they are all free and easy to use, a user can combine several tools to satisfy a bunch of instructional needs in a complete instructional system. Then here comes the question, should an IT insider spend extra time to learn advanced technological skills such as programming and media production?

This illustrates students’ reaction when Dr. Yuen introduced the easy-to-use web 2.0 tool Wikisite AFTER he taught the whole class Dreamweaver last semester in our IT755 web based instruction course.  I have always agreed that as an IT insider, we are supposed to equip ourselves with strong media production abilities, because you do not know how many available developed open-source softwares are out there and you do not know if that will satisfy your needs. As the connivence from these web-based, open-source tools increases, I probably need to have a second thought about it – they pretty much can satisfy your need when you are conducting instructional activities or designing instructional systems. If you have a need (or idea) that you want to carry out, find these resources first and if possible, combine some tools. If you really cannot find one to satisfy your need or carry out an idea, then congratulations, you will soon became the author, initiator or designer (whatever you call it) of next web-based, open-source, easy-to-use and welcomed web 2.0 tool.