I am starting to work on a new research project that I will tie in with my 2017 presentation at the HVAC Excellence conference in Orlando, FL. The title of the presentation is, “Instructional Technology: The good and the evil.” Almost six years ago I gave my first presentation on instructional technology and at that time I believed what we were seeing was the next best thing to the invention of toast. It was new, it was exciting, and the thought of students happy in a classroom, the happy instructor wandering through mentoring them, using individualized education was a dream.
Well, over the last six years I have lived instruction technology as a classroom instructor, as a department chair, as an administrator. I have seen to positives, the negatives, and some of the struggles of adoption. In order to quantify my conference talk I am working on a small research project. I hope to answer one primary question:
- Does 1:1 Instructional Technology add educational value in the post-secondary vocational classroom?
- If yes, how? If not, why?
- If different for a specific set of students, why and how?
I would really like to have feedback from instructors and students that have worked in a 1:1 technology environment. I want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly of these experiences.