ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the debates around what digital technology can actually do for education. It summarises the debates and introduces some of the different ways that the authors can think about what technology might do for education. The chapter starts by looking at some of the assumptions that underpin the contrasting claims for technology and suggests some alternative ways of thinking about these. It discusses the concept of 'affordance' and how this can help teachers to identify where technology will be useful for them. The chapter also considers the social and political aspects of technology use and the debates about how these might shape how technology is used in education. It claims that technology can have a positive effect on education and those that claim a negative impact on learning are based on a misplaced assumption of determinism – that technology causes social change.
