Educational Technology - A Reflection

Deciding what kind of technology to use within education, whether it's applied directly in the classroom or in developing curriculum, can be a daunting task. This has been particularly evident in my Educational Technology course, in which we briefly cover some technologies that can be utilized in education. It quickly became apparent that what we were learning was just the tip of the iceberg; depending on how one defines 'educational technology' (a nebulous term, a point emphasized on day one), educational technology could entail hundreds of thousands of things, and that's a conservative estimate. The only possible contribution I can hope to make when it comes to teaching others about educational technology is how to search for it. Since it comes in so many different ways, it's important to learn how to filter what's important.

We often do this when we shop online. If I want to browse games on Amazon, I can do this in a number of ways: filter the category to 'Video Games,' filter the console of my choice (usually Playstation 3 or Playstation 4), filter by new or used, filter by the average user ratings of the game, and I can even go into minor details, such as filtering by a specific game developer. The power of filters when searching for things can be incredible in its impact on efficiency, yet it's something I see under-utilized time and time again.

Turning over 32,000 video game results into 56 results with the above filters on Amazon.com

These same filter principles apply to educational technology just as much as they do to video games, cars, microwaves, restaurants, or anything else one might be inclined to search for. While it's always a best practice to search for things that have a perfect 5-star rating, keep in mind how many people rated it. If the website you're using gives you the choice, it's best to filter by 1. average user rating and 2. number of ratings. Personally, I'd rather go for the 4.5-star item on Amazon that has 3,400 reviews than a 5-star item with only three reviews, but it ultimately comes down to what you're most comfortable with. The important thing is that you know how to turn a massive amount of data into something more manageable, and once that's achieved, you can then exhibit freedom in arbitrary and subjective decisions of how the data is interpreted. With some luck, you'll soon be able to quickly search for the best of a certain type of educational technology while comparing it with others.