Page 8 - Education in a Digital World

PREFACE

Digital technology is now a prominent feature of education provision and practice
in many countries and contexts. Mobile telephony, internet use and other forms of
computing are familiar, everyday tools for a sizable proportion of the world’s
population. Billions of personally owned digital devices are in frequent use, and
billions of others are used communally in shared, public settings. Governments of
nearly every country in the world now have established policy agendas that seek to
encourage and support the use of digital technologies in schools, colleges and uni-
versities. Digital technology is a topic that is of significance to a global educational
audience.
Yet while this is now an internationally important field of study, many academic
writers and researchers remain surprisingly uninterested in discussions of the forms
of educational technology that are situated beyond their own familiar boundaries.
This is especially the case for academics working in Anglophone countries (myself
included), where global awareness of educational technology often goes little
further than the academic educational technology literatures from the US, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Besides these familiar settings, the occasional
reports from ‘other’ countries that one may come across are seen usually as marginal
additions to the field. The ‘international imagination’ of many English-speaking
educational technologists is therefore fairly unadventurous and largely monocultural.
Is the use of computers in Chilean schools essentially the same as in Chicago?
Are online learners in Mali are doing pretty much the same things as they do
in Melbourne? After all, are we not living and working in a ‘one-size-fits-all’
global village?
Clearly this is not the case and, if pressed, many Anglophone writers and
researchers would concede that they are less aware than they should be of the
diverse educational technology issues and debates that are of importance outside