What is technology

1
Introduction

• What is technology?

2
Session objectives

• Introduce the course team
• Clarify expectations
• Explain assessment
• Attend to housekeeping
• Tutorial arrangements
• Discuss concept of technology

3
Course team

• Examiner lectures
• Peter Albion
• Moderator
• Petrea Redmond
• Tutors
• Janet Cochrane (Wide Bay)
• Joan Conway
• Bruce Cook
• Janice Jones
• See web site for details

4
Technology education

• National Key Learning Area
• New Queensland syllabus
• Broad definition of technology
• NOT specifically or mostly to do with computing
• Associated traditional curriculum areas include
• Manual arts
• Home economics
• Agriculture
• Media
• Business
• Computing

5
Course focus

• Technology education
• Primary school
• Implementing the Queensland syllabus
• NOT Information Technology except
• As in the information strand
• As an example of technology
• As a tool for course work

6
Course Materials

• Text book
• None but a useful reference is
• Fleer Jane, Technology for Children
• Course web site
• Via USQConnect StudyDesk
• http//www.usq.edu.au/course/material/edu1471
• Schedule
• Lectures - recorded using iPLOD
• Reading
• Tutorials
• Assessment

7
Commitment

• Lecture Series - Theory background
• Tuesday 1200 - 200 L206
• Typically less than 2 hours
• Recorded for Wide Bay campus
• Will include some participation elements
• May affect assessment
• Tutorials
• Attendance is expected
• Linked to assessment
• Group/class work is involved
• Come prepared - see web site

8
Assessment

• 4 tasks - total of 50
• Due at tutorials in weeks 5, 6, 7, 8
• 4 components
• Managing technologies
• Technology education in the curriculum
• Design in technology education
• Resource for technology education
• 2 projects - total of 50
• Due 22 29 October
• 2 components
• Curriculum resource (Class submission)
• Reporting on learning through the process

9
Lecture series

• What is technology?
• Different views
• An engineers view
• Technology education
• Queensland syllabus
• Process approach

• Resources
• Integration
• Curriculum planning
• Assessment evaluation
• Challenges
• Current directions

10
Defining technology

• Popular conceptions
• Recent
• Invented since I was born
• Complex
• Something I do not understand
• Physical
• A machine or other object
• High technology
• Technology stocks
• Dot com

11
Technology computers

• Computers are one form of technology
• T IT should not be conflated or confused
• US usage
• Technology sometimes equated to information
  technology
• UK Australian usage
• Information and Communication Technology
• ICT (sometimes CIT)

12
What is technology?

• Technology is how people modify the natural
  world to suit their own purposes
• International Technology Education
  Associationhttp//www.iteawww.org/
• From techne - Greek meaning art, artifice or craft

13
Queensland syllabus

• Technology arises from desire to extend human
  capabilities
• May refer to
• Processes of development
• Products created
• Related know-how
• Tools and equipment

14
Working technologically

• Technology is a process for
• design and development of products that enable
  people to meet their needs
• Queensland syllabushttp//www.qsa.qld.edu.au/

15
Technology change

• Technology seeks to satisfy needs
• Purposeful change
• Not all change is technological
• Technological change is in the made world
• Change does not equal improvement
• There may be winners and losers

16
Technology values

• Technology is a human activity
• Driven by human purposes
• Needs and wants
• Choices about technology
• Which needs or wants to meet?
• Answers lie in beliefs and values

17
Technology choice

• Technology is based on choice
• About goals
• About means
• About priorities
• Technology offers choices
• New possibilities

18
Technology society

• Technology exists in a social context
• Human needs and wants
• Individual societal values
• Society culture
• Influence value placed on technologies
• Are influenced by technologies

19
Technology science

• Variety of views
• Indistinguishable
• Science precedes technology
• Technology as applied science
• Independent, different goals methods
• Technology precedes science
• Provides tools for science
• Interactionist - each learns from the other

20
Technology is

• A distinct field of human activity
• About meeting human needs wants
• Influenced by values beliefs

21
Housekeeping

• Week 5 debate
• That the distribution of infant formula should be
  restricted as for prescription medicines
• Issues with tutorial allocations
• Need to resolve this week
• Week 2 - 5 discussion based on classes
• Necessary absences
• Practicum
• Other