Saturday, January 01, 2005

The Kickoff Post!

I’m not sure what I’m kicking off here, or where this will even go, but what I would like to do with this blog is to share information, with whomever, about ideas pertaining to instructional technology. We’ll see over the next several months where this goes. Even if this ends up as an electronic file of thoughts and ideas for my use, that’s fine with me.

There is a great deal to talk about where technology and education is concerned. I was reading the other day (yes, I cannot remember the book, or I’d link it here), and I ran across a quote that I had encountered in another book we were reading in the Technology and School Change class I was taking last summer. It was from Diffusion of Innovation by Everett Rogers, and pertained to change agents.

A change agent is an individual who influences clients’ innovation-decisions in a direction deemed desirable by a change agency. Change agents face two main problems: (1) their social marginality, due to their position midway between a change agency and their client system, and (2) information overload, the state of an individual or a system in which excessive communication inputs cannot be processed and used, leading to breakdown. Seven roles of the change agent are: (1) to develop a need for change on the part of the clients, (2) to establish an information-exchange relationship, (3) to diagnose problems, (4) to create an intent to change in the client, (5) to translate an intent into action, (6) to stabilize adoption and prevent discontinuance, and (7) to achieve a terminal relationship with clients.

Although the focus of the book is not technology, its theme of change is relevant to technology in education. Our focus in schools needs to be on the change that we want (in the way people teach and learn) and never on the technology. Our efforts need to focus on the human capital (students, teachers, administrators, parents) and not the ‘stuff.’ All of the roles that Rogers mentions above relate to what we ‘change agents’ aim to accomplish, and every single one of them pertains to people and not things. Why is this focus difficult for schools to grasp? Why have we focused technology plans, visions, and professional development on technology and technology applications out of context from our primary goal - learning? Should we really have a technology vision? Or should our vision really be for learning - learning in a technology rich 21st century?

Posted by Randy on 01/01 at 08:33 PM
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