Using information technology in education can provide both positive benefits and potential pitfalls. Some potential benefits include connecting classroom and field experiences, allowing students to experience new concepts, and enabling new forms of student production and development. However, some common pitfalls include teachers and developers failing to appreciate implementation challenges, prioritizing technology over content, and scaling issues when trying to address large problems. Ongoing trends include increasing use of mobile, ubiquitous, and sensor technologies.

1. Using information
technology in education,
positive benefits and
potential pitfalls
Euromarine 2012-01-17

2. Johan Lundin - johan.lundin@gu.se
Univ.of Gothenburg, Dep. of Applied IT, Learning communication and IT
University West
LinCS

3. Education and technology

4. Educational expectations on IT
• Teaching machines, computer aided instruction, AI tutoring, drills
and often games (Skinner, 1968)
• “From the player’s perspective, the coach will provide advice regarding strategy and tactics for
better play. But, from the perspective of the coach, the request for help is an opportunity to
tutor basic mathematical, scientific or other kinds of knowledge that the game
exercises.“ (Goldstein & Carr, 1977, p. 1)
• “This represents a static view and perhaps an outdated stimulus- response perspective on
learning research, which is trying to establish a direct cause-effect relationship between
technology (stimulus) and learning outcome (response), while ignoring the larger context within
which learning occurs.” (Alavi & Leidner, 2001, p. 9).

5. Educational expectations on IT,
cont.
• A tool for the learner
• Tools for living (as tools enhancing what we can do), and tools for learning (as tools that are
meant to fade out in use as the user can perform the activities by themselves). (Carmien and
Fischer, 2005)
• Simulations, visualizations and roleplays
• A perfect simulation (with regard to learning) is not necessarily depending on how close to an
actual real world event the experience is, but rather how well it allows for and supports
interaction, reflection and learning among the learners. (Lundin, 2005).
• Distance and learning, students distributed and away from teachers,
fieldtrips, resources at a distance from co-located teachers and students
• Support for collaborative activities, sharing, collaborating, peer-learning,
etc.

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8. iDeas, mobile, personal, in the field, connected, generic
tools, knowledge expanding

9. Using the WIKI
together

10. Creating structure Analytic work

11. Creating norms
!

12. iDeas
• Generic tools allowed for students to construct their own
structure, and for unexpected uses of technology
• Making activities and development visible
• Tools that are useful in distributed and co-located activities
• Connecting the field with campus
• Allowing for individual and collective knowledge building
1. Lundin, J., Lymer, G., Holmquist, L.E., Brown, B. & Rost, M. (2010). Integrating students’ mobile technology in
higher education. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation. 4(1). 1-14.
2. Brown, B., Lundin, J., Lymer, G., Rost, M., and Homquist, L.E. (2007). Seeing Ethnographically: Teaching
ethnography as part of CSCW. In Proceedings of ECSCW 2007. pp. 411-430.
3. Lymer, G., J. Lundin, B. Brown, M. Rost and L. E. Holmquist (2007): Web based platforms in co-located practice –
The use of a wiki as support for learning and instruction. In Proceedings of CSCL 2007. Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, pp. 476-485.
4. Lymer, G. & Lundin, J. (2007). Formulating text: The practice of commenting in academic writing instruction. Paper
presented at the EARLI Conference, August 28 - September 1, Budapest, Hungary.

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14. Building your dream home

15. The ongoing task design process
Suggested by
Suggested by students
teacher
Predefined Using the 3D program to Furnishing the house, making
curriculum- design the house, building calculations of the size of
based content a house in cardboard furniture
Spin-off Making the house
Making the house functionally
content - off aesthetically pleasing
pleasing (choosing media
(choosing wallpaper,
task calculations of wall paper-
equipment, calculations of
costs)
size)
1. Tallvid, M., Lundin, J., Lindström, B. (forthcoming 2012). Using TPACK for Analysing Teachers’
Task Design – Understanding Change in a 1:1-Laptop Setting. Submitted to SITE2012.

16. Some common pitfalls
• Teachers rarely appreciate the difficulties of technical implementation
• Developers rarely appreciate the difficulties of implementation in pedagogical
practice
• Creating repositories of information which are difficult, or demands large
resources to contextualize into educational practice.
• Technology blackbox (hide) what is to be learned/the content or Tech.
emphasize unwanted aspects of the topic
• Students end up learning how to use tech. instead of learning the intended
content
• Scaling is generally neglected, small projects over short time want to adress
large problems over long time.
• Inherently difficult to predict any future use of technology of based solely on
the properties of a particular technology. Several studies are: “… showing how
nearly identical technologies occasioned quite different social meanings and
consequences in comparable organizational settings.” (Robey & Sahay, 1996, p. 108).

17. Some possible benefits
• Connecting classroom with field, and non-school practices,
when to meet and when to work distributed?
• Allowing for experiencing previously unavailable “things”
• Allowing students to engage in new forms of production
and development
• Connecting students and teachers over distance (seems
surprisingly difficult).
• Crowdsourcing students.
• From efficiency to quality to efficiency?

18. ongoing and upcoming
tech trends
• mobile tech, in particular personal ones
• ubiquitous computing - computing built
into other tools - web of things (with
sensors?)
• robots
• sensors, in particular personal ones