It occurred to me a little while ago that I was incorrectly mixing the terms "educational technology" with "e-learning" (and vice-versa).  It should have been obvious since the root verbs to learn and to educate mean different things. But I'm not the only one who makes this mistake, so to promote clean dialogue it's worth pointing out the differences.

Let's start with their formal definitions:

Educate - verb - give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, esp. a child), typically at a school or university

Learn - verb - gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught

The verbs have different actors.  Educators help a learner to learn.  However, a learner does not need an educator to learn.  A learner can acquire a skill or knowledge without the aid of an educator via study and/or experience.

Likewise, educational technology is aimed at educators whereas e-learning is aimed at learners.  If you provide educational technology your customer is the educators (or the institutions that represent the educators).  If you provide e-learning your customers are the learners.

Educational technology, by definition, must include some way to help educators with their goal of teaching learners, but it may optionally include e-learning components aimed directly at the learners themselves.  For instance, Aplia was an educational technology platform that helped educators manage and administer their classes. However, it also included e-learning components in the form of graded/practice homework assignments and online experiments.

We may say that The Khan Academy is an e-learning solution since it targets learners directly.  Recently, however, they launched features that allow teachers to organize and follow their students progress through KA.  I would define those features as educational technology.

I'm not picking sides (yet) as to where we should focus our efforts, but it's important to understand that to improve education and learning, we must remain aware that they are fundamentally different--different actions taken by different actors.  Likewise, targeting one, the other, or both for disruptive innovation presents a different set challenges, some of which I hope to discuss on this blog.