Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Teachers College's for Educational Techology?

Posted by Cliff on from the learning-how-to-implement-new-ways-of-learning dept.

gandrews asks: "I'm looking into advanced degrees in education with a focus on computers. Problem is, a lot of the departments I've found look like they're stuck in the early nineties -- they're still hung up on the possibilities of html and BBSes, and aren't paying attention to organic ways kids are already using chat and email, or how kids become autodidacts ? using computers. It doesn't improve my opinion any that so many of these university websites are broken. Does anyone know if up-to-date dialog on technology and education even exists in academia, and if so, where is it?"

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. One Good Program... by napoleonin · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you're not against having to live in the Midwest, I've known a number of people (grad and undergrad), who went to Indiana to study this, and they all seemed happy.

  2. Institute of Learning and Research Technology by Asmodeus · · Score: 2, Informative

    ..at the University of Bristol, UK

  3. go figure -- nobody answered the question... by Spamlent+Green · · Score: 2, Informative

    Good old Slashdot -- the peanut gallery always outweighs the actual advice (OK, one or two exceptions: somebody mentioned GMU, which does at first glance appear to have a semi-decent program.)

    Anyway, I can tell you from first hand experience that yes, what you have noticed is generally true. I went to the Harvard Grad. School of Ed. for the same kind of program. YMMV, but there was not much thought to newer technologies, and it was still very much mired in bulletin boards and such.

    However, it focused more on core educational concepts, so you were generally free to apply those to whatever technologies you deemed fit. It was pretty free-form, so if you wanted to design your own independent research on the technology of your choice, go for it. Just don't expect anyone there to know squat about the tech. you choose.

    You've really got to decide what you want to get out of the program: a foundation in educational theory with some intro on how to apply it to technology; an introduction to yesterday's educational technologies (perhaps formerly known as intructional technology); using technology in the classroom; etc.. All of these are available somewhere, but probably no single program offers everything.

    Start with the bigger Graduate Schools in Education (Columbia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Harvard, come to mind), look at the faculty, the courses, and their research, and then broaden or narrow your search accordingly, but also look at related disciplines (media & communications, psych., etc..)-- the MIT Media Lab does some crazy stuff, for example. (and you can sometimes cross register from HGSE)

    Talk to current students & alumni -- see what they're doing in school as well as where their careers went afterwards. Do these paths mirror where you see yourself?

    Also, using the current web sites as a divining rod is not always the best practice. Seems like a good idea at first, but these sites often get left to the students to fix up, and who wants to bother with that when they're neck-deep in course work?

    Good luck -- and watch those apostrophes.