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Reading the two literature of Week 4 & 5 assignments, i.e. 1) Price and Kirkwood (2011) Enhancing professional learning and teaching through technology: a synthesis of evidence-based practice among teachers in higher education and 2) The NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition; I felt the above title is the most deserving. The two articles reveal that learning and learning methods are dynamic and different all the time.  This has resulted in new trends, innovations, dynamics of education technologies all of which enrich teaching and learning approaches, experiences, and processes.  Interestingly, the invention of new technology does not automatically erase the old one. They either co-exist or complement one another because the shift is transitional. In other words, educational technologies have developed through incrementalism and reflective approach. Care in the process is very necessary as Price and Kirkwood (2011) observe, that using technology in education can be a costly business, both in relation to the financial investment for infrastructure and equipment and in personal investment that staff and students make in using the technology in learning and teaching.  It is on this basis that I appreciate the evidence generated research to inform about practices, technologies, and theories.

Reading through Price and Kirkwood (2011), I observe that technological advancement in learning and teaching is so dynamic. They mention technologies like virtual learning environment (VLE), podcast, digital video, YouTube, Facebook, blogging, e-portfolios, and wikis. The literature quoted in the text range between the year 2000 – 2010. While these technologies have persisted, some have been modified to a better version, while others have been condensed and used concurrently. In the task of week 4, my group C members introduced me to newer technologies and innovations that minimize costs and maximize output in the teaching and learning process. Among them are padlet,  Thinglink, prowise, kahoot and others. I thus appreciate that the term and practice “blending” methods have remained a significant concept amidst new technological innovations.

The NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition reveals how education technologies have this evolved. They group them into consumer technologies, internet technologies, social media technologies, enabling technologies, digital strategies, learning technologies and visualization technologies. We learn that all the above component now operates like parts of the body, living organism if I am to borrow the old theory of social functional theory of Bronislaw Malinowski. They form a structure, function, order, interdependence and evolutionary change.  This imagery confirms what the NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition observe that educational technologies are critical aspects and implications for leadership, policy, and practice. They honestly accept that the process certainly presents challenges at three different levels; these being: solvable, difficult and wicked challenges. Moreover, all these still have implications for policy, leadership, and practice.

The above is more critical for developing countries because, at the current rate, we learners and teachers will need to skip some stages in order to catch-up.  Taking Uganda as an example, since we are predominantly   using traditional methods of face-to-face, the appropriate transition would be using educational technology for teaching aids, like use of computers, computer software for teaching, database, research and data analysis e.g., PowerPoint presentation, statistical package for social sciences, Atlas Ti, Endnote and encyclopedia. However, before most teachers and learners learn these skills, we are now into high education technologies like online learning, mobile learning, Web 2.0.  Moreover, as I read literature on the MOEDE programme, I learn that even the developed countries seem to see education and learning technologies as moving too fast; at times perhaps concentrating on the technologies than the objectives of learning.  To developing countries, this is a serious challenge to the leadership, policy, and practice to devise strategies or regulations to ensure the means (educational technologies) do not override the end of learning and teaching. Yet at the same time to keep a pace that elevates the learning and teaching practices to international standards as they ought to be.

Based on the above, as a response to Activity 13 of significant new technologies, I would like to observe that my organization has a school of computer sciences that is working on several innovations through research to coordinate the transition to eLearning and educational technologies in the university.  However, I notice that there is no proper coordination among faculties, and this compromise the appreciation of eLearning and educational technologies in teaching and learning. Yet rapid educational, economic and social transformation through educational technologies compel some of us to individually adopt curiosity-based learning through informal learning or workshops and short courses.  It is on this basis that I use the technologies below. I cannot account for the university practices because, in my faculty,  educational technologies are not officially and commonly used at the moment.    

In my department of Development Studies, I would propose the adoption of social media, flipped classroom and online learning.  While each has special reasons, I will later give in the table below, the general reason is that these technologies are available, affordable and user-friendly in a way that they can enable transition from purely traditional methods of face-to-face to online learning through blending approaches.