Educational Technology vs. Technology Education, What’s The Difference?

The change in focus that needs to occur in education can be illustrated by the difference between the fields of Educational Technology and Technology Education. Educational Technology is the use of technology as a tool to teach any academic subject. This is all well and good but it lulls people into a false sense of security in thinking that this prepares them for the hi-tech workplace that they are entering into. Technology Education is teaching about technology itself, what it is and how it works-how all technologies are nothing more than extensions of different parts of our body, about the binary number system, about computer logic gates, about how to use a soldering iron, about how to put together electronic and mechanical things.. These are the types of technology skills that can begin to be taught at the middle school level and that are needed in the hi-tech manufacturing workplace. If these skills are given to the 75% of students who do not obtain a college degree, it would go a long way toward alleviating the unemployment and underemployment so many of these students experience.