Thursday, May 07, 2009

Adopting the Latest Greatest Tool

With the continuous development of new and cool tools for teaching and learning, making sense of it all is becoming quite a challenge. Should faculty strive to integrate the latest greatest Web 2.0 technologies? To what end? Aside from teaching, instructors must engage in other critical and time-consuming responsibilities. Compared to past technologies, Web 2.0 tools are more user-friendly and appealing to explore independently. However, for a number of instructors, keeping up with "what's new" is not necessarily highest on their priority list. Their bigger concern is finding the time to integrate such technologies in meaningful ways that markedly enhance learning as well as current teaching practices.

Ironically, the abundance of new, often free, and easy-to-use technology tools may not translate proportionately to increased adoption of technology in academia, at least for now.

No comments: