ADDIE: "It's elementary, my dear."

Educational technology is a term that can be defined many different ways to each person. I look at it as more of an evolving process. Since education and technology are ever-changing, the definition cannot be concrete. My current definition is that educational technology is more of a learner centered process that develops with the aid of technology. This process can be student (individually driven trial/error) led or educator led (guided by someone with prior knowledge of the material). Whenever students of any age are learning any new material, finding technologies associated with the subject matter is imperative. Too much of our present day, and future is controlled by the progression of technology. Everything from daily interaction to the workforce requires (or is benefited by) a knowledge of technology. The progression of definitions in our text supports my idea of there not being a set specific definition for the term/idea. As technology advances, so does our use of it in education. When I started teaching 5 1/2 years ago, there were not too many applications I could use in the classroom. This all changed when schools began to relax their network firewalls and with the rise of smart phones. Not many people had an iPhone, and the districts were scared of the trouble students could get in when accessing internet.

Now, many districts are incredibly relaxed on their cell phone policies and many teachers allow use of cell phones when working on projects. I taught a mixed level high school class 3 years ago and gave the students many option/ideas on presenting their final project. For comfort reasons, I allowed them to use PowerPoint, but reminded them it would have to "knock my socks off" in order to receive an A- an average power point was going to receive an 80 on our grading rubric. A different option I gave my students was to make a video on their cell phones and email it to my school account after it was edited. The kids were thrilled that I was allowing them to pull their phones out and film during class times. I reminded the kids to be creative and find newer, free apps to edit the video. The project outline they tuned in also had to include which application they used to edit and the process/time it took. Finally they reviewed the application and their own final video. After all the projects were turned in (90% chose the video route), I showed my principal and he was so impressed that he put his favorite 2 in our next staff development meeting and allowed me to explain what we did. I, along with my students, was thrilled about the success of this project.
 **This lesson was 100% learner centered and goal oriented. It also focused on a meaningful performance and was very self-correcting. Even though this was a team effort, I feel the outcome could have been measured differently for the groups. The project had a rubric, but some of the grading scale was participation and I allowed them to grade each other. Usually, and in my previous experience, this approach allows the students to be anonymously honest.... but I found that for this project, they must have enjoyed themselves so much that most teams gave each other a 100% participation grade. I am choosing to believe I just had an AMAZING group who really did all equally share the responsibilities :).**

Dr. Robert A. Reiser has chosen to follow the viewpoint [along with others] that teachers, chalkboards and textbooks are not considered instructional media. I disagree with his choice. I feel teachers, or facilitators, will always be instructional media. We instruct our students how to use different technologies, or at least facilitate the search for them. The literal, and dated, terms "textbook" and "chalkboard" have been replaced with eBooks and dry erase whiteboards. The eBooks is still a text, and the whiteboard allows classes to use an integrated system to link the whiteboard and the projector. I believe the purpose of instructional design is not to incorporate media into instruction, but instead to use it to increase learning by doing. By adding media into the classroom lesson, the students are more responsible for their own learning. This gives even the youngest a sense of empowerment.