ABSTRACT
In most histories of educational technology, technology is referred to as a way of supporting education. In this chapter, we explore what happens when this framing of the relationship is reversed and we think about education as a way of supporting technology. We begin with the story of some of the first schools 4000 years ago in Ancient Sumeria. These, we claim, were created to support what was then a relatively new information and communications technology, cuneiform literacy. We argue that the shift from education based on talking and listening to education based on reading and writing involved a change in how knowledge is thought about and how education is understood. After the spread of education based on literacy, and later, on print literacy (which includes numeracy), a new kind of knowledge became possible: knowledge as an indirect representation of a reality rather than knowledge as a direct relationship with reality. This shift from oracy to literacy involved losses as well as gains. We end with a case study suggesting that digitally mediated education might be able to include more of the relationship and connectedness that is of value in oral education systems whilst continuing to support the greater reach and power of print literacy.
