As we all know, technology is ever
changing and its impact is powerful and widespread. Changes in
technology impact every decision we make about our capital budgets,
curricula, and personnel. Ultimately, advances in technology
have a dramatic impact on our students.
What happens if you’re a small program with a severely
limited budget or, for that matter, a large program with significant
purchasing power? How do you know the equipment you purchase
is the right equipment for your program, faculty and students?
How do you know the technology you buy today won’t be obsolete
in two years? How do you go about considering those inevitable
advances when developing a strategic capital purchasing plan?
Technology exerts tremendous influence on our personnel decisions in terms of
who is hired, what classes are offered, and who is assigned to teach them. What
happens if you need to purchase new technology to stay even with or move ahead
of other programs but your college/university has put a freeze on new hires,
and you don’t have the faculty on board with the ability and interest to
make use of it in their teaching? A gap always exists between advances in technology
and the faculty’s understanding of and ability to incorporate that technology
into their teaching. So, how do you decide when you or your colleagues should
be re-tooled and what you should be re-tooled to do? Should your program/college/university
provide the financial, time, and other kinds of support necessary for that re-education?
Technology has the potential to improve our teaching and learning but only as
well and as rapidly as we teachers/learners and administrators can and want to
embrace it, afford it, understand it and communicate it to move ourselves and
our students forward.
rtvj-aejmc.org is
the official webpage and online newsletter
for the Radio-Television
Journalism
division
of
the Association for Education
in Journalism and Mass Communication
webmaster and design by Tim Bajkiewicz, University of
South Florida, tbajkiew(at)cas.usf.edu
Judy
Cramer, Ph.D.
