Educational technology as a craft
Educational technology is usually described as the place where two fields meet. I find it more useful to treat it as a craft. Teaching is one craft: reading a room, choosing the next move, adjusting when it doesn’t land. Building technology is another: prototyping, trading off, shipping and fixing. Educational technology is doing both in the same decision, for learners you’ll rarely meet.
In practice, serious work needs far more than two literacies.
Someone designing a national learning platform may need to reason about all of these, sometimes in the same decision.
Nobody masters all of these equally.
- Understand learning
- cognitioncurriculum
- Understand people
- accessibilityresearch
- Make things
- interaction designsoftware delivery
- Make decisions
- datameasurement
- Work with systems
- organisational changeimplementationpolicy
- Help practice change
- teacher practice
What does an educational technologist know?
What forms of judgement does the work repeatedly require?
The craft map
Six regions of judgement
Six cards, one for each region. Turn a card over to see its places: the guides that teach it, or the nearest page or glossary entry where no guide covers it alone.
Where next
Follow this idea
Operationalise it
Pathways through the guidesPage
Related argument
The designed conditions of learningDomain
Follow the concept
The craft glossaryGlossary