Etymology Influences IT Things Non-IT Things Main

Things That Aren't IT

Instructional Technology is so many things that add up together that it is important to note that some of these things on their own are not IT. Like Powerpoint -- a great tool cannot enliven a dull speech. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In rhetorical terms, and to somewhat overwork my classical metaphor, Instructional Technology is a metonymy in which the whole stands for the parts. Unfortunately, IT is often the victim of another trope, synecdoche, in which the part (Distance Education, computer-based instruction, WebCT, online class) is used to incorrectly summarize the whole.

Trusty but Dusty: Using the same old familiar way of delivering content is not IT, which seeks opportunities to try things differently.

Instructor Centered: Those who can do, those who can't try to get tenure. When I read Noble's diatribe against the "Digital Diploma Mills" in which he says that the technology allows for "more careful administrative monitoring of faculty availability, activities, and responsiveness" as if that was a downside, I wrote in the margin "accountability?" Sure, the spector of the administration peering into every nuance of an instructor's life is overbearing. But isn't his reaction more about fear? The part about it being increasingly expected that instructors be available to answer email and be "instantly and continuously accessible" was pretty funny too. Isn't this happening to everybody? The age of entitlement where a faculty member gets to live in an ivory tower has long been done in by departmental battles and scholarly skirmishes anyhow. Instructors need to give up on the idea that they stand at a golden lectern dispensing wisdom.

Paper, Crayons, Scissors, Field Trips: Instructional Technology cannot replace all of the tools and experiences that are useful for learning. But it can try.

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Last updated 2/7/03