“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” ― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/43940.Ken_Robinson
We live in an ever-evolving world, with the pace of change often outstripping our ability to keep up with it. Much of this rapid modification of our lives is driven by advancements in technology, forcing us to adapt and amend the way in which we approach our daily affairs. To be sure, these technological innovations have also necessitated that we as teachers revise the way in which we approach our pedagogies. True, often these technological breakthroughs are driven by the desire to refine and improve our teaching practices, but the real truth is that developments in technology have us teachers changing the way we teach, often playing catch-up to bring ourselves up-to-date with current technologies with which our students are already adept. The simple fact is that this surge in technology developments has led to a seismic upheaval in the way in which we interact with each other, our families, and our students.
This book is an attempt to bring our teaching practices in line with the technologies that are available today, both within the educational and public spheres. It is our sincere hope that readers and users of this ebook will find it helpful in learning how to shape our teaching so that our teaching drives our use of technology, rather than the technology driving how we teach. Our goal is that this ebook is used to ensure that our teaching is purposeful and visionary, rather than reactionary and blind. Interaction with this book can take place in the contexts of formal, informal, and non-formal learning and will engage readers in a learner-centered format with content, other learners, social networks, and other instructors. Given that this is the 7th iteration of this ebook project, users of this current version will join a learning community built around the ideas of Personalized Learning Environments and Open Network Learning Environments. Further, we, the editors, have decided to make this resource free to anyone who is interested in using it. Thus, we intend this ebook to contribute to the growing body of literature and resources that comprise the Open Education Resources (OER) freely available to the public.
The structure of this ebook is rather straightforward in that it is a traditionally organized, edited book. In this sense, it is a compilation of individual works by groups of authors that can serve as stand-alone chapters. However, it is also designed to be a reference handbook that can be consulted for suggestions for readings, learning activities, and ways to connect with others - other teachers, other learners, other communities, and the like. The ebook should, therefore, be equally accessible to those who are engaging with these themes for the first time and experts in the field. We hope all enjoy and continue to learn, interact with the materials herein, as well as with others within and outside of the field of Educational Technology.
~Benning Tieke
On behalf of the Editors
Acknowledgment
This eBook is dedicated to Dr. Chih-Hsiung Tu, Ph.D. our mentor and professor at the Northern Arizona University for his dedicated and tireless pursuit of teaching excellence to guide and support the Education Technology scholars and students at NAU.