Pedagogy First, Technology Second: How to Choose the Right Tool for the Job

Opening Keynote: Sarah Robbins
Pedagogy First, Technology Second: How to Choose the Right Tool for the Job

Today’s educators are inundated with technology options. In addition to the tools made available on campus, we are also faced with reacting to the wide variety of technology that students bring to the classroom. Though it’s true that learning objectives and sound pedagogy take precedence over adding technology to a course, the sheer speed at which tools advance can make it difficult for educators to know whether or not there are technologies that could assist or improve their courses while maintaining sound pedagogical practices.

In this presentation I will argue that there is an easier way to understand new technologies and quickly assess their learning value for a specific application. Using Activity Theory and Genre Ecology Models we will learn that if we cook a tool down to simple communication mechanics we can quickly understand how that tool can or can’t contribute to the learning objectives in a given course. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the approach ready to apply it to the next new tool they encounter.

Sarah Robbins

Sarah “Intellagirl” Smith-Robbins is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Kelley Executive Partners as well as a member of the Marketing faculty at the Kelley School of Business. She is also a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at Ball State University. Her research focuses on communication practices in social media, virtual worlds and video games. Sarah spends her days designing games, ranting about social technologies in education and business, and fighting the misperceptions about the ways social technologies are changing our lives. In addition to being a pink-haired mother of triplets, Sarah is also a writer and an instigator of various acts of geeky creativity. Find out more about Sarah at www.intellagirl.com.