Page 169 - Education in a Digital World

156 So Where Now?

technologies in bringing social progress. Very little is acknowledged publicly
about the clear inequalities associated with technology use in education, or the
exploitative power relations that underpin much of the implementation of educational
technologies around the world. Even the language that is used to discuss education
and technology is often overly technicist and far removed from the language that
is used often to discuss people’s ‘real-life’ engagements with education. Seldom
are alternative opinions voiced from those who are being educated or those who
are educating.
Following this line of reasoning, coordinated attempts should be made to ‘capture’
the common-sense understandings that surround education and technology, and to
enable an enhanced critical public awareness. An initial step in this respect would be
to encourage as many people in as many contexts as possible to get involved in the
shaping of educational technology through the development and the stimulation of
a democratised discourse about the capabilities and purpose of digital technology in
education. Just as there are growing calls for the development of ‘public under-
standing of science’ or a ‘public understanding of the past’ given the increasing
importance of science and history in people’s lives, so, too, there should be
increased public engagement with issues surrounding education and technology.
There are many aspects of educational technology that are currently under-
publicised and under-discussed but need to be brought into mainstream discussions.
These conversations should be expanded to encompass a host of contemporary
questions that surround the moral philosophy and ethics of educational technology.
As Keri Facer (2011) has pointed out, educational technology discussion and debate
usually overlooks long-term issues such as the educational implications of fast-aging
populations, the technological implications of ecological and environmental change,
or the societal implications of the collapse of industrial models based on oil con-
sumption and the internal combustion engine. In Foucauldian terms, then, support
needs to be given to the production of ‘counter-narratives’ about education and
technology – critiquing dominant discourses by revealing the partiality, inadequacy
and provisionality of overarching grand theories of educational technology, and
making transparent the relations of power behind specific claims to the ‘truth’ about
educational technology.
Much of this discursive politicisation of educational technology would involve
reframing and repurposing the ideas, language and values that have been attached to
educational technologies over the past thirty years. This ‘ideological cleansing’ could
involve, for example, finding new ways of ‘de-scribing’ what are rather tightly
scripted products – for example, the currently popular description of ‘Technology
Enhanced Learning’ which offers a highly bounded and partial account of the rela-
tionship between technology and education. Even the simple act of encouraging a
more diverse vocabulary for describing technology use in education could work
to introduce alternative values in educational technology provision and practice
(e.g. using language that reflects the right to participate, income equality, full public
participation in production). There is also scope for an ‘intellectual cleansing’ of