Epilogue: Building Allegiances and Moving Forward

Abstract

The chapters in this book have certainly resulted in a markedly different portrayal of education and technology than is usually the case with academic discussions on the topic. None of these chapters has concurred with the notion that educational technology is simply a matter of “harnessing” the “power” of largely neutral, benign technologies in ways that support and empower individual learners. Instead, as all the authors in this collection have shown, there is a lot more to education and technology than simplistic descriptions of “technology-enhanced learning” and “personalized learning networks” suggest. Indeed, the important point of contesting the commonsense language of technology and learning was ably critiqued in the chapters by Friesen and Williamson, and remained a recurring theme throughout other contributions. The plurality of interests, values, and agendas that have come to inhabit seemingly unassailable notions such as “twenty-first-century skills,” “e-safety,” and “one-to-one computing” was laid bare in the contributions from Shutkin and Hope. The chapters by Rudd and by Dessel, Ferrante, and Sefton-Green remind us of the influence of national politics and the ambitions of nation-states, while Selwyn also reflects the importance of interests operating above/below the level of the nation-state.