Week 3 Reflection

From this week readings what I have retained is that educational technology is not a new field of inquiry as many people might think. Indeed, this field exist since the beginning of the computer revolution in the 1950. The main goal of the field of study has changed in a drastic manner during the time moving from supporting standards teaching practices in the beginning to improving and fostering the quality of education today. Indeed, the first the first objective of using technology in education systems was merely to support teachers in their activities, they were not suppose to play a central role in the education environment as it is the case today. As we all know it new technologies are everywhere in our classrooms, we use them in mostly each of our class activity and and they contributed to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the students since the later have now access to information and can to their own research without  in most of the cases the help of the teachers.
It seems important here to underline that the new technologies as an instrument of change have been victims of many resistances in the school systems. And this continue to be the case even today. Indeed, many teachers saw in these technologies a threat. They were uncomfortable about using these technologies because they were not familiar with them and also because by using these technologies, the students become more autonomous and rely less on the teachers for their learning.
Furthermore, the top dow approach which has been adopted by many education institutions has contributed to frustrated may teachers. The absence of training for the teachers was also an important cause of the resistance of many teachers against the use of the  new technologies in school.
The lesson I have learned from these examples was that it is not possible to successfully implement a new technology in the school environment without including both the teachers and the students in the process. The teachers are one of the key  actors in the school life and their commitment to the new technologies is an imperative in order to improve the performance and the quality of the education delivered in class. Students should also be involved because their are the final customers of the new technologies. It will be useful to know what kind of technology they want to use in order to facilitate their learning process.
To conclude , I think this week reading clearly pointed it out that the only way to make a good use of new technologies in the education system is when everyone in the organization is informed and trained about how to use these technologies. School actors should work together as members of a same team in order to adopt and to use in the best manner the new technological tools which will help them achieve their goals and objectives