My Educational Technology Philosophy - A Reflection

Coming into this class, I had already developed a philosophy of education for two classes, Philosophy of Education and Nature of Schools. While these were a collection of general, rather broad viewpoints on my philosophical position on education, I had never actually stopped to think about developing a philosophy for educational technology specifically. I suppose that I just figured that the grounds upon which I had established my general philosophy of education would translate over to my views on educational technology. And for the most part this was true. For both the general and technological philosophies, I take a constructivist view, believing that students should be given the opportunity to take charge of their own education and “construct” meaning themselves based on their learning experiences. However, while the thoughts and opinions that influenced my view on my general philosophy of education have been developed for hundreds of years, educational technology is relatively new and I believe it required special attention and consideration in order to formulate an educated viewpoint. This meant that I needed to comb through additional resources such as our eText and the postings each week in order to tailor my philosophical viewpoint to address the needs of educational technology. I also felt it was important to address the place of educational technology specifically in my content area of science. While I believe it is important to integrate technology in all content areas, it is also imperative that the technology that is implemented is selected because it fits best with what is needed depending on the content. In other words, there is no one size fits all for integrating technology, and the programs that work best for one content area may not work as well in another, so each classroom should be assessed based on its individual needs to determine the best way to implement technology. Overall, I thought that developing am educational technology philosophy was important to do in addition to a general philosophy of education because educational technology is such an important aspect of the classroom that it is necessary to take the time to think specifically about my role as a facilitator of learning through educational technology.