It is amazing to see how learning and instructional technology have co-evolved as computer technology has progressed. The future of education looks bright.
Professor
New computer and multimedia technologies offer tantalizing opportunities for teaching and learning. I see them as personal challenges: how can I use them in in partnership with other teachers to reach challenging students? I continue to look for ways to harness new media in order to make learning more accessible for all people.
One often hears about the digital divide but I would rather view it as a digital bridge and focus on the many opportunities such technology can offer us to learn and teach others. Technology can be used to create interactive web-based tools that help a wide variety of students, from the intellectually challenged student who struggles with the basics to the gifted student who is bored with even advanced studies and everyone in between.
I am very interested in dispelling the tension between fun and education. I like to use the term “serious play” because it describes my mission to bring the play experience into schools via game-based learning. Computer games should not be used as rewards once the “real” school work is done, but instead could be the core of the school experience. Also related to web-based learning, I am now an app developer. I have challenged myself to continually learn and embrace new technology, so I created a fun and educational app for users, and another one for my research. Apps can be used for so many educational situations and I see this as a new frontier. It is amazing to see how learning and instructional technology have co-evolved as computer technology has progressed. The future of education looks bright.