Static versus Dynamic Technologies

For the reader who is just joining this conversation – dynamic technologies are those cool things most of us never experienced while in school – wikis, blogs, video conferencing, online tutorials and so forth.  Static technology is something many of my generation are very familiar with – text books, group papers, maybe a movie and the lecture.  Based on the readings I am right smack dab in the middle of the static – dynamic continuum.  My online courses are utilizing many of the dynamic technologies whereas my face to face (f2f) classes are rooted in the static technologies.  Part of the reason is that the classes are with two different educational organizations.  The f2f classes rely heavily upon lecture, presentations and the textbook to impart knowledge to the learner while the online classes look towards discussion boards, instant messaging, Skype and other interactive collaborative rich tools to disperse knowledge.  As the instructor I do have the authority to enhance the classroom and up until now I did not fully realize the discrepancy in learning I was perpetuating.  Both classes receive the same information but my online students are gaining an edge over my f2f students as they are more prepared to deal with real life.  Critical thinking is the skill set that the classes are to help develop but in looking at these classes with new lenses I can see a disparity between the two.  Going forward I plan to incorporate some of the dynamic technologies in the f2f classes and actively begin to offer a hybrid approach.

See the attachment for my concept map on static-dynamic technologies.

ConceptMapArliaK

 

I have made comments at the following blogs:

 

Rashida Brown

http://rashidabrown.wordpress.com/

Heather Rogers

http://waldeneducationaltechnology.blogspot.com