A Reflection on the History of Educational Technology and Evolving Pedagogies
Educational technology has developed from five basic approaches toward technology use: (1) the technical perspective, (2) the objectivist perspective, (3) the constructivist perspective, (4) the collaborative perspective, and (5) the social-ethical perspective. Each perspective has distinctly impacted educational technology. Every one of these threads has roots in a related field and no single thread can form the foundation for educational technology. The unique element of online instruction is the potential for a truly non-sequential model of learning. This is the only element that can be better designed online; all the other characteristics that have been reviewed can be implemented by other methods, or as adaptations of other methods used in other formats. For this reason, it is recommended that future efforts at designing pedagogy for online learning make non-sequential instructional design central to the theoretical model. This is an issue that technology leaders must consider when planning technology integration.