Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance

"Get up, stand up" - Bob Marley

Here is the paper Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance, which I wrote with Sue Greener and Asher Rospigliosi for ICICTE 2008. (The picture is of Urulua LeGuin, who wrote The Ecumen books).

We examine media & technological determinism in the context of educational technology. We argue that educational technologists cannot take a ‘deterministic stance’ & should practice ethics founded on an ecumenical view of theory & technology. Taking a cue from social cognitive theory, senior educational technologists should also visibly engage in reflective practice leading to ethical outcomes to motivate less senior members of the profession to do likewise. We note the problem that many senior educational technologists are aligned with a particular theory and/or technology, which has helped them to secure their position. They will need to change their outlook in order to address these goals & this is very hard for senior practioners to do. We suggest that action learning might offer a supportive route to personal transformation.

Shurville, S., Greener, S. and Rospiglosi, A. (2008). Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance. In the proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Information and Communications Technologies in Education, Corfu, Greece.

I have three papers accepted by ICICTE 2008

"We three ..." - Patti Smith*

I have three papers accepted for ICICTE 2008 this year:

• Building a Variety of Educational Technology Worth Wanting by Dr Simon Shurville, Dr Sue Greener and Pericles ‘Asher’ Rospigliosi.



• Embedding Educational Technologists within University Structures by Dr Tom Browne, Dr Marian Whitaker and Dr Simon Shurville.



• The Extended Mind and Learner Generated Contexts by Dr Simon Shurville.
  

Henk Eijkman and I are also running a symposium at the conference on the philosophy of educational technology. I hope to see lots of regulars at the conference and look forward to co-editing the Campus-Wide Information Systems special issue based upon it.

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* "Every night on sep'rate stars, before we go to sleep, we pray so breathlessly. Baby, please, don't take my hope away from me."

If you have not heard We Three sung by Patti Smith (or Bob Dylan), then do yourself a very big favour and buy Patti's Easter album then take out an hour or three to engage with a Rock N Roll poet at the top of her game. Finding the Dylan version takes a bit longer with a torrent search engine but as Stan Lee would say "it qualifies you as a true beliver".