What are learning technologies?
(Learning Technologies Zone)
‘Learning technologies’ refer to any technology that can be used to help with teaching and learning and/or the learning experience.
Learning technologies are not learning about a specific set of technologies, rather they refer to any technology that can be used to help with teaching and learning and/or the learning experience.
“…Learning Technology as the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that are used to support learning, teaching and assessment.”
Association for Learning Technology (ALT)
www.alt.ac.uk
Today, we commonly associate the term technology with anything to do with electronics – more specifically, computers, tablets, smartphones, etc. However, we need to look at what technology actually means, namely:
The sum of any skills, methods and processes used to achieve objectives, be it the production of a product, scientific investigation or the recording or passing on of information.
As such, technologies used to help with teaching and learning existed well before the advent of computers or even the use of electricity. You only have to look at printed books and before that manuscripts, the use of writing slates in classrooms, engraving or painting on stone, wood, or any technology involving a medium and being able to leave a mark. How such technologies were used in the past is speculative, as we obviously only have what evidence has managed to survive. The idea that early man possibly made drawings or marks in the mud or sand to pass on information from individual to individual should not be discarded out of hand. Particularly as archaeology increasingly indicates our ancestors as being far more intelligent and civilised than previously thought. Either way the use of a writing medium to pass on information, to help others learn, would be a learning technology.
Learning technologies today
Nowadays, learning technologies are very much regarded as anything electronic in nature, such as the use of smart boards in lecture and classrooms, video recording of in-person lectures so they can be accessed again for revision or by those who could not attend in person, creation of podcasts and/or the creation of fully or partially online courses that take advantage of a plethora of Web 2.0 technologies, eg interactive quizzes and games, discussion forums, online assessment, etc. Part of the fun of being a learning technologist is coming across a technology and investigating its potential for helping in teaching and/or learning.
Accessiblity is very much a key factor to be considered when creating content and using learning technologies today. Making sure that whatever is created it is available in such a way that anybody with impairments can also access it and ideally not be disadvantaged. That is it delivers the same pedagogical meaning. A simple example might be the inclusion of an image to highlight a point. If somebody can not view the image, there needs to be good description of what the image is showing/portraying.