A History of Instructional Design and Technology

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Provide a whole class with laptops and wireless internet service access 24 hours a day, every day of the week seems like a very good idea, but the reality is other. As we have seen in the chapter three of ‘Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology’ the technology innovations along the years had not been the solution to the educational problems. As we have seen in the History of Instructional Design and Technology; computers have not fulfilled the prediction made in the 1980s, which say that computers would revolutionize instruction.

In this specific case (providing teachers and students with 24/7 access to laptops, curriculum materials, and wireless internet services) had little effect in the manner in which instruction was presented in the teacher’s classrooms. These results may be due to three possible factors: 1) Teachers resistance to change, 2) The cost associated with purchasing and maintaining these technologies, and 3) The lack of adequate guidance to the teachers.

The first reason why the project had very little effect on the teachers’ instructional practice was the teachers’ resistance to change. Over the time we have seen that teachers are afraid to change, afraid to leave their comfort zone and dive into new areas and try different things related particularly with media and technology issues, for these reasons they resist change specially top-down. The second reason is the cost associated with purchasing and maintaining these technologies. This is a very serious problem because once made ​​the investment in hardware and software is very important to know how to give proper maintenance or such investment may be lost easily, computers require specialized maintenance that teachers are not prepared to provide most of the time. The unconscious manipulation by some students help make the problem worse, so the cost associated with the purchase of laptops increases significantly because they have to pay technicians to provide adequate maintenance of the systems and medias.

The third reason is the lack of adequate guidance in how integrates this technology into their instructional practices. Teachers often are in the position of not being well trained in the use of some method or technology, this is a problem of great proportions since is not very useful to have the means but not master the method. What can they do with laptop and 24/7 wireless if they can’t integrate these tool into their lessons properly?

Some strategies that could have helped this project to be successful could have been the development of teaching guides for the integration of these technologies into their lesson plans. If teachers had had an adequate preparation, probably they would not have been afraid of change and the unknown. Also With proper training technical problems educators could have given basic maintenance to the laptop units and thus save on the costs of technician support.