Summer Session

Today is the first day of Summer Session 2011. On the menu for the summer is Seminar in Educational Media and Foundations of Educational Research (qualitative). I'm trying not to psych myself out about the statistics class. Did I really dream about a t-test last night? Probably not as I can't actually remember what a t-test represents. I really shouldn't have taken 12 years between my Master's and my Ed.D., but then again I didn't know what I wanted to get my doctorate in until a couple of years ago.

Which leads to the second of today's psych outs. Finding a niche. I really thought this would be easier. There are so many things I would like to study in relationships to ed tech: social media, virtual worlds, serious games, blended learning, using software life-cycle best practices in ISD. Oh the possibilities are endless, but how do I actually go about studying any of these? They all seem to fail the practicality test.

One of the biggest issues I am seeing in my practice is that three years ago, someone without an academics or teaching background decided to build a state-of-the art facility for a new training campus. Sounds great, technology in all the classrooms. In practice however there are many snags.

1. First of all, they chose technology that was cutting edge back in 2008, but today in 2011 it is less then impressive and isn't even fully supported by the vendor(s). 
2. Second, there are five classroom building, and they didn't get the same vendor for all buildings, which means the technology is different in two out of the five buildings. Still haven't figured out the best way to train new instructors. The staff isn't even fully trained on both sets of technologies.
3. Third, they bought these large SMART Podiums and placed them in small classrooms and basically nailed them to the floor, which means the instructor now stands directly in front of the screen staring at the light bulb. Some rooms are so poorly designed that they can't even pull out the document camera on the side of the podium (which is a different vender than the SMART technology so it doesn't integrate). Those who understand the art of  instruction are flabbergasted at the lack of fore-though that went into the building of these state-of-the art facilities. Simply adding technology without an idea of how that technology would be utilized is a great waste.
4. There is some wonderful technology available to the instructors, however this technology was not melded into the curriculum. Instructors, on their own time, would need to go into the classroom and familiarize themselves with the technology and develop ways to use it in their class. Even if they are motivated to do, most have little training in how to do so effectively.
5. Related to number 4 is the fact that there is no shared repository between instructors and programs. So if one instructor does take the time to develop interactions for their class it will probably be known and used only by that specific instructor. This is not a good use of time and effort.

So how do I convince this institution that it needs to address the issues of education technology within the curriculum as well in instructor competencies? How do you get the different parts to work together to facilitate not only a best practices, but a lesson's learned and a way forward? I am hoping that in the future I look back at this post and say, man those were the days.