ABSTRACT
While digital technology and media now proliferate in contemporary society, the relationship between education and ‘the digital’ continues to be of particular interest to many academics. The digital practices and processes of contemporary education are therefore best understood as sites of struggle and intense conflict. Discourses of digital education have proliferated since the introduction of the first ‘standalone’ computers into university and high school classrooms in the 1960s. The normalisation of these discourses has been supported by the efforts of multinational technology corporations in facilitating research and development efforts to outline and promote the ‘principles’ of twenty-first century skills. De-schooling discourses have long persisted within discussions of digital education. Indeed, a subtle rejectionist line of thinking is apparent throughout the arguments of Seymour Papert – perhaps the founding father of academic educational technology. The ‘communities’ of learners established through these digital technologies differ considerably in terms of social diversity, obligation, solidarity and underlying structures of power.
