Response to "A Short History of Educational Technology" and "Soft is Hard and Hard is Easy: Learning Technologies and Social Media"

    I did not think I would enjoy reading "A Short History of Educational Technology" as much as I did. As I got more into it, I noticed myself becoming more curious. I was surprised to learn that the king of Egypt was not a fan of writing. He thought writing would cause forgetfulness and make people stop using their memory. I disagree with this because I believe writing actually helps me remember things better. For example, when I am attending a lecture for a class, I try to write some notes down. This helps me remember the subject at a later time. Scientifically, it is also a fact that this act of using the muscles in our hands to write something down does help us remember those things better. This is called motor memory. As a future science teacher, I support this fact. 

    I was also shocked to learn that The World Wide Web was only formally launched in 1991. I would have guessed that it was established quite a few years earlier. Additionally, google was only created in 1999, which is the most commonly used search engine today. I think it's really crazy how we have become so used to and accustomed to these things, when they were only established a very short time ago. We use them constantly in our everyday lives. I was further astounded to find out that learning management systems, such as Blackboard, were developed in 1995. It is interesting to me that we still use this system today. I am sure there have been many improvements on it, but I am curious as to why no other system has topped it. One would think people would come out with multiple different variants of it, yet Blackboard is the most commonly used in education. 

    On the other hand, honestly and truthfully--I did not enjoy reading the article "Soft is Hard and Hard is Easy: Learning Technologies and Social Media" as much. It was a little hard to follow, however I believe I did understand the point of it. It mainly described the difference between soft and hard technologies. For the most part, soft technologies provide creativity and adaptability, whereas hard technologies give consistency and accuracy. An example from the article that I particularly liked was about the violin. It talked about how although the instrument may be soft utilized by anyone, only an expert can consistently coax it into making pleasant sounds. In addition, adding new "tools" to it, such as bowing techniques, it can become a more complex and capable technology. 

    There was also a section in this article specifically about pedagogies as technologies. I liked how it defined pedagogies as techniques, and as repeatable methods, procedures, and strategies for teaching. I assume this would be related to the kind of work we will be doing throughout the semester in this course. My hope is that this course guides me to learn and implement different technologies into my teaching. I want to be able to use all of these resources to my advantage.

    Comparing the two readings, I noticed that they both described social media as a means of education. I believe this can be argued. Personally, I like to use social media in my down time, to relax, and to connect with my friends. I do not think of it as part of my education. Nowadays, it is becoming more common to post about current events, and everybody is trying to stay informed. I guess one can consider this aspect of it as being educational. Then again, every social media user is different, and uses it differently, so you can have one person consistently posting about politics and worldly news, while another person's feed is full of selfies. Nevertheless, social media has definitely become a big part of our world today.