ABSTRACT
Technologies that mediate the student-teacher experience, often called “media” in education, have been a physical presence in educational settings for centuries, long before their electronic and digital transformation. Much has been written to capture this technological presence in the classroom, often in the form of how-to and promotional pieces and from the pedagogical perspective of one-way, passive instruction. Over the last decades in particular, however, there has been a major transformation in the form and capacity of educational technologies as well as in the pedagogical interpretation of how to use them constructively. With the onset of digitalization, teaching and learning technologies have grown more sophisticated in their ability to present subject matter vividly, seamlessly and interactively. When they are used effectively, these new media can enable both teachers and students to immerse their senses in the material and to engage in two-way communication with and about the subject matter. In essence, the focus on new media in education has become less about its structural novelty and more about its transparent ability to bring students, teachers and subject matter closer together for enhanced teaching and learning experiences. Because of their ability to evoke psychological perceptions or illusions of students, teachers and subject matter that are “virtually” real, new media in education are increasingly referred to as virtual.
