Digital games for learning have quickly transitioned from a theoretical possibility, to a hyped technology, to an idea that almost seems quaint compared to advances in Biochips, Smart Robots, and self-driving cars. As a field, it is now better understand what games are good for, what they are not, and in what kinds of situations they can be…

In this regular feature of "Educational Technology," Michael F. Shaughnessy and Juchao Yan present their interview with Robert Talbert, Associate Professor, Mathematics Department, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. Their interview centered around thirteen questions that professor Talbert provided enlightening responds…

If one wants to teach youth to think, one has to restrain himself from doing all their thinking for them. One has to refrain from specifying in advance what they are going to think. Yet, this is just what educational technologists are consistently guilty of doing. Educational technology is committed to excluding the possibility of anything new or…

The author proposes that today's existing, world-wide curriculum--based on offering roughly the same math, language arts, science, and social studies to all--is not what is required for the future, and is hurting rather than helping the world's students. Math, language arts, science, and social studies, he argues, are really "proxies"…

Instructional designers face tremendous pressure to abandon the essential characteristics of educational approaches, and settle instead for routine practices that do not preserve the level of quality those approaches originally expressed. Because this pressure can be strong enough to affect designers almost as gravity affects objects in the…

Article intends to help solve the dilemma regarding the advisability of using behavioral objectives. (Author/HB)

Past, present, and future trends concerning behavioral objectives. Topics include: the nature and roles of objectives, conceptual objectives for domain-referenced education, and objectives for instructional and evaluation design. (DAG)

Discusses potentials of situated learning in response to criticism of a previous article. Topics addressed include educational technology; education and political issues, including educational goals and literacy; learning theories; visuality and other modes of knowledge acquisition; cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning; and…

A method to evaluate instructional objectives is considered; 1) it is based upon child behavior, and 2) it is a means of evaluating objectives apart from instruction. (Author)

A discussion of synthesized behavioral objectives (SYNOB), which is a record or form for communicating a variety of alternatives within a specific behavioral objective. (Author/HB)

A discussion of goal specification and evaluation as a beginning point for the formative evaluation of a university course for departmentalprogram. (Author)

A general overview of the appropriate role of behavioral objectives in curriculum decisions. (HB)

Author states that subjecting all English teachers to a flattening, homogenizing planning methodology, merely sets up restricted channels for thinking, trivializing the work of able teachers and sanctifying the ineptitude of weak ones. Routinized response to formula drives out real thinking, real planning. (Author)

How an objectives based evaluation model can be expanded to yield more information. (HB)