Page 160 - Education in a Digital World

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EDUCATION IN A DIGITAL

WORLD – SO WHERE NOW?

Introduction

The past seven chapters have considered many forms of ‘educational technology’– all
being enacted in different settings for different purposes. A range of actors and
interests has been implicated in these accounts, from the United Nations and
Microsoft to educational policymakers and individual learners. When approached in
this manner the educational use of digital technology is revealed to be a complex
affair. Indeed, throughout this book educational technology has been shown to be
an often inconsistent and ‘messy’ process. This final chapter is, therefore, unable to
offer a set of straightforward conclusions or neat recommendations. Instead, educa-
tional technology continues to be an area of discussion where there will always be
more conflict than clarity and consensus.
One of the guiding aims of this book was to construct a comprehensive account
of education and technology from a ‘relational’ perspective. In this spirit the past,
seven chapters have explored and exposed the inherently political nature of educa-
tional technology. We have been reminded – if reminder was needed – that edu-
cational debates about digital technology should not be framed purely in technical
terms. Instead, the coming together of the educational and the digital is a pre-
dominantly social affair – based around struggles over benefit and power, equality
and empowerment, structure and agency, inequality and social justice. In particular,
educational technology has been shown to be a site of intense ideological conflict
and shaped by a range of values, agendas and interests. As examples throughout this
book have suggested, most aspects of educational technology are therefore linked
(to varying degrees) with issues of economics and economy. Indeed, many forms of
educational technology continue to be implemented in deliberate support of the
‘learning/earning narrative’ of the knowledge economy (Brown et al. 2011). This is