"My first question would be: how do you define technology? A
couple of
years ago Dennis Baron visited OU and gave a talk about the
History of the
Pencil, which apparently was quite a technological advance at
one point.
So what exactly are we talking about when we talk about
technology?"
I believe that this is a crucial epistemological question,
clarity about which helps us to better address the issues in
this thread.
My understanding of the word 'technology' is that it concerns
any artefact at all that we use to make sense of and use of our
environment. If this definition is accepted, then the school
itself is a learning technology. Within this overarching
technology pencils, chalk, books, computers are all
technolgical artefacts whose use is mediated by the
organisational structures of the school - classes, timetables,
age-year cohorts, and so on.
The school-as-artefact has remained remarkably stable and
durable in its form for over two hundred years, despite being
challenged from Dewey (and by Dewey's tutor before him whose
name I have forgotten) onwards.
What now interests me greatly is whether modern communications
and information technologies, with their enormous and diverse
potential, will at last lead to major redesign of the
school-technology, or is the cultural and historical channeling
so deep-rooted that IT will be constrained to the ways it can
be used within the current socio-technical context?
Phillip Capper
Wellington
New Zealand