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When I think about "infrastructure", I normally think about roads, wires, sewerage and so on. But how about educational technology and instructional design? From reading Don Norman's musings about infrastructure, I realized that if we want our technological implementations to be successfully adopted, very often it's essential to also consider the infrastructure needed to support our tech designs and implementations. Personally, I think infrastructure for education and instructional design need not always be physical things. They could be intangibles such as having to update a database, notify the relevant people in charge, call this person or that to come unlock the computer lab, etc. My mum's been a teacher for 40+ years. She's great. But she really hates the computer. Not because of the learning needed to use Microsoft Word. She's quite fine with it. But it's all the non-Microsoft Word things that she has to do - reboot, turn the computer on, manage the files, etc... - that makes her scream.  "It is time to work on infrastructure. It threatens to dominate our lives with ugliness, frustration, and work. We need to spend more time on the designs for infrastructure. We need to make it more attractive, more accessible, and easier to maintain. Infrastructure is intended to be hidden, to provide the foundation for everyday life. If we do not respond, it will dominate our lives, preventing us attending to our priory concerns and interests and instead, just keeping ahead of the maintenance demands." - Don Norman Food for thought: What are some underlying "infrastructure" (tangible and intangible) that I may encounter in an educational technology project? Are there existing infrastructure that I can take advantage of to minimize time and $? How can we minimize the amount of infrastructure maintenance needed?

NIE is mentioned in this article talking about mobile technology in schools. And the platform chosen was Windows.... The National Institute of Education of Singapore is assisting teachers with the development of customized curriculum in English, Science and Chinese that leverages the benefits of mobile, Internet-connected, learning devices and provides students with new learning opportunities that are not possible with paper and pencil. We co-design technology enabled lessons with the teachers and provide professional development to teachers that enable them to enact lessons using smartphones. It is critical to empower teachers to orchestrate the transformed classroom to support students' personalized learning," says Professor Looi Chee Kit of the National Institute of Education. All smartphones are equipped with MyDesk, a next-generation mobile learning platform tailored to leverage the capabilities of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. MyDesk enables each student to access his or her assignments, relevant websites that contain podcasts, textual material and video clips and educational applications, such as concept mapping, drawing and animating, to practice both self-directed and collaborative learning.

As we move forward in education and the world continues to grow technologically it is incumbent upon the institutions that educate our children to make social media and technology available and a part of their learning every day.

Tan, Hu, Wong, Wettasinghe (2003) on Information Technology and Singapore Education, Instructional Framework, Instructional Strategies (Direct Instruction, SDL, Group Work, Computer-Mediated Communication, Constructivist Learning, Learning through Experience) Computer As an Administrative Tool - Blackboard ! Computer As a Presentation Tool - from PPT to Prezi? Computer As a Tutor - engage the learners in higher order thinking Computer As a Cognitive Tool - mindtools Conclusion: To successfully integrate IT into teaching and learning in schools is a challenging task that hinges on a lot of factors, including effective teacher training. Darling-Hammond (1994) describes the new paradigm of teacher learning as a place in which opportunities are provided for "learning by teaching, learning by doing and learning by collaborating." In our attempt to avoid reducing such training into teaching of discrete IT skills, or merely talking about it through lectures, we presented an approach that modeled various pedagogies, including direct instruction, self-directed learning, group work, computer-mediated communication, and constructivist learning. We also provided a holistic technology-enhanced environment, for the trainees to experience the use of the computer as an administrative tool, as a presentation tool, as a tutor, and as a cognitive tool. These strategies are built upon theories and studies of learning, as well as the use of IT in education. The results of the trainees' evaluation of the module indicated a generally positive reaction to the module and the perception that the instructional objectives have been achieved. These are encouraging indicators of the effectiveness of our instructional strategies, which we will build upon for further improvement in the subsequent delivery of the module.

A must read: As educators, there is a need to see the advantages of how BYOD can be intertwined with education positively and how it is able to embrace itself with technology instead of ignoring it. 

Tech in edu trends you might be interested to know...

Some research in the British Journal of Educational Technology that is relevant to some of our initiatives.

Link to very useful PDF for educators on copyright and fair use guidelines

We invite you to join us for the second annual Google in Education Singapore Summit to be held at the Singapore American School on September 7 and 8, 2013. Open to attendees from around the globe, this summit offers unique and cost-effective advantages for all participants: FREE parking and WiFi Early bird registration for only $249 Continental breakfast and coffee with networking time and bonus sessions each day. Direct access to Google employees and world-class educational technology leaders.

Open Thinking and Digital Pedagogy is the personal and professional blogging space of Dr. Alec Couros, a professor of educational technology and media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina.

Great resource page for IDs and ETs.

Like your comment about how the iPads don't become the focus of the learning. That's a thought that's been on my mind recently - the importance of the perception of "seamlessness" in tech usage. That's probably one of the most important reasons a technology gets adapted - no matter how cumbersome it seems at first (e.g. learning how to drive a car) - because the normal usage of the technology doesn't hinder the intended task at hand. (That's why once you learn to ride a bike, you don't think so much about the bicycle itself as you think about moving faster.) Think Donald Norman in "The Design of Everyday Things" has a term for this: affordability. So I guess, my thought on the usage of the iPad (and any new tech at hand): The learning of the new tech need not be intuitive. But the everyday usage has to seamlessly flow with the given task at hand - so that the tool and the user become "one" with the task. (Just like how a user fumbles with a pair of chopsticks at first, but once he masters it, his chopsticks "become" part of his fingers.) Then such seamless technologies get seamlessly adopted as "cognitive-multipliers".