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Dron's take on technology#

What is educational technology?

Dron (2021) answers

educational technology, or learning technology, may tentatively be defined as one that, deliberately or not, includes pedagogies among the technologies it orchestrates.

Based on Arthur's (2009) definition of technology (emphasis added)

the orchestration of phenomena for some purpose (Dron, 2021, p. 1)

Phenomena includes stuff that is "real or imagined, mental or physical, designed or existing in the natural world" (Dron, 2021, p. 2). Phenomena can be seen as belonging to physics (materials science for table tops), biology (human body climate requirements), chemistry etc. Phenomena can be: something you touch (the book you hold); another technology (the book you hold); a cognitive practice (reading); and, partially or entirely human enacted (think/pair/share, organisational processes etc).

For Arthur, technological evolution comes from combining technologies. The phenomena being orchestrated in a technology can be another technology. Writing (technology) orchestrates language (technology) for another purpose. A purpose Socrates didn't much care for. Different combinations (assemblies) of technologies can be used for different purposes. New technologies are built using assemblies of existing technologies. There are inter-connected webs of technologies orchestrated by different people for different purposes.

References#

Arthur, W. B. (2009). The Nature of Technology: What it is and how it evolves. Free Press.

Dron, J. (2021). Educational technology: What it is and how it works. AI & SOCIETY. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01195-z

Random old notes#

  • Orchestration of phenomena to some use - Technology: organising stuff to do stuff
  • Technologies evolve by assembly - The stuff we orgnaise to do stuff usually includes staff that has been organised to do stuff
  • Counter technologies - many/most technologies in an assembly are needed to fix problems caused by other technologies in the assembly
  • Soft technologies are made to have gaps inventively filled

  • Hard technologies force us to fill the gaps correctly, as cogs in the machine

    However, any technologies can be assembled with others in new and unpretesteable ways

  • Not just users but participants - technologies are partly (sometimes wholly) made of us

  • Technique the stuff we do with stuff that is done - technologies are enacted by humans

  • The adjacent possible - there are always gaps to fill. New tech makes new adjacent possible empty niches

  • Pace layering - larger and slower changing technologies have more influence than smaller and faster changing technologies. There are hierarchical layers.

  • Path dependencies - What exists constrains invention

  • Hard technologies create the context/environment for software technologies - What is rigid constrains what is flexible

  • Syndecdoches and wholes What matters is the whole assembly. The parts may be essential, but they are not the technologies of interest.

Suggestions#

  • Build with small robust, assemblable components
  • Be the orchestration, not the orchestrated
  • Use open standards, or wrap closed systems in open wrappers
  • Rent generic replaceable services, not monoliths