ABSTRACT
For the purposes of this chapter, we use the notion of technologized learning (TL) to denote the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in education. Education here continues to refer to activities ranging from school classroom teaching to workplace learning, and TL issues ranging from the implementation of system-wide technologies to learners’ engagement with so called web 2.0 environments, and from the role of ICT in the managing and administration of organizations to the use of assistive technologies. Tracing the genealogy of the different terms deployed to frame our understanding of ICTs in education would itself be an interesting task, but one beyond the scope of this book. E-learning, networked learning, online learning, open learning, distributed learning, virtual education, digital media and technology for learning, technology enhanced learning, are all used to enact the entanglements of computing and education. Each in their own way is trying to characterize particular relationships among electronic technology, teaching and learning – as, for instance, different pedagogic spaces, different pedagogic relationships and identities, or simply a more efficient technology for teaching and learning. Here, it is important to point to the way in which the technology in TL is often reduced to that associated with computing. However, it does not take much sense of the historical to realize that education has always had material technologies associated with it, ether directly or indirectly: technologies to which ANT studies in education have attended with particular interest. Directly, through such items as pens, cookers, Bunsen burners, slates, chalk, etc., and indirectly, through such things as mass produced textbooks that rely on the printing press, electricity networks that power the infrastructure of institutions, or the roads and buses that enable teachers and students to journey from home to institution and back – with no doubt occasional loiterings along the way. Each technology in education is therefore always already an assemblage. So, for example, in relation to the uptake of interactive television (ITV):
The ITV technology and equipment in many ‘smart’ classrooms and distancelearning facilities enlist a host of participating actants. The hosting institution sets aside funds and employment; the academic and facilities departments
fill those employment slots; the telephone company provides technical consultants and account administrators; glossy advertising copy draws in audience support; clocks regulate labour hours; darker shades of paint ensure appropriate background contrast; and any number of other actants come together to ensure that ITV functions within certain parameters.
