Representative Educational Technology Challenge
As an educational technology expert, you have been invited to a meeting of a parents’ association at a school that has recently introduced many innovative technologies for students. A great deal of taxpayers’ money was used to completely renovate the school’s technology infrastructure, and then acquire and deploy many new technology-based learning materials and instructional systems. Among the new materials are a series of simulation-based game environments known popularly as the SIMs. These games are highly interactive and allow students to manipulate about a half dozen variables in order to achieve a desired outcome such as maximizing the number of adults who vote in an election. The new learning technologies have been in the school for two years but there have been no noticeable changes in graduate rates, dropout rates, attendance, or scores on state and national tests. The parents are concerned that their investment has been wasted. You have been asked to testify as to whether or not that is the case, and why or why not.
TASK
1. Identify and describe the key factors that you would consider in framing your response to the problem situation stated above.
2. Identify and describe the key factors that are likely to be in contention between parents, teachers, administrators, and designers.
3. Indicate and describe the relationships among all of the key factors that have been identified.
4. Indicate what things should be targets of change in order to make the best of this problematic situation.
5. Create an annotated concept map that reflects the things indicated in response to the previous four tasks.
6. Reflect on your responses and your concept map, and then describe the assumptions you have made and what resources would be required to implement the solution you have in mind; present this response in the form of a logic model that includes a theory of change
