ABSTRACT
The Internet and on-line learning currently capture public attention and define today’s popular perceptions of educational technology. Yet, it is selfevident that the history of technology in education extends back to the clay tablets, slate drawing boards, and handmade paper of pre-Gutenburgh education. Because of this apparent continuum, some educators like to think of the technologies as being mere tools that are defined and studied as a subset of the way they are used – the instructional design. Others take an opposite approach, defining the educational transaction by the way it is delivered and mediated by a particular technology. This later interpretation echoes Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that ‘the medium is the message’ (1995) and seeks to identify the unique technical and cultural features and related symbol sets of each particular medium.
