CAI (Elective)
This page is getting updated for Fall 2010
This class has gone through a number of changes over the years as a result of the every changing landscape of technology and education.
Using technology to enhance educational effectiveness is, more than anything else, a creative endeavor. Technical knowledge and skills help, but educational technology, computer assisted instruction, instructional design, network assited language learning, or whatever the heck you want to call it is mostly about people and communication.
Sometimes the best technology is a whiteboard and marker, a pencil and paper, or wood blocks.
This semester, you will explore different tools and improve your skills at evaluating how a specific tool might be useful in education. Technology is changing so quickly that the software you learn how to use this year may very well be obsolete by the time you graduate. The tools we review this semester may no longer be relevant in two or three years. Therefore, our goal is not so much to learn how to use specific tools or software, but how to evaluate technology.
In the future, your ability to effectively apply technology to your work will depend less on the discreet technical skills your learn this semester than on your ability to embrace and evaluate new technology.
