Just because you use some application or piece of software does not mean you know it.

There is a reason why race car drivers often start out as (professional or amateur) mechanics: In order to get the best performance out of your vehicle, you need to really understand it. In order to do that, you need to know how it works.

This is also true of ‘technology’. There are FAR far too many people out there designing computer-based educational applications who know very little about how the computer actually works.

Now I’m not going to tell you that you need to have a degree in IT or CS (I have two) but I AM going to tell you that you need to know more about tech than most EdTech programs will give you.

There are a lot of educational applications out there that are visually appealing. That’s not the problem. A lot of EdTech designers seem to understand what I call the “Decorative Media Principle”. It involves creating a visually pleasing background and other decorations for a worksheet, website, game, etc. that is sometimes thematically connected with the instruction (sometimes it’s just cute, cool, or pretty). For example, in the work I have done with the “Ducks in the Classroom” project, vocabulary and word games are created on a pleasing background – possibly a nest, words enclosed in images of eggs, duck footprints, etc. The principle, although unproven is that the decoration helps to increase interest and may also increase the conceptual coherence of the learning object (see also Here and Here).

This is not a bad thing, but when it comes to interactive media it is not enough and people should not mistake simple aesthetics for effective use.

The bottom line: if you want to be able to design good computer-based instruction, you need to understand your tools. Simply “hiring it done”  is not enough.

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