Taking a register is one task certain teachers do every day, in primary school this is often the start of the day and even in secondary school attendance has to be monitored. This is less common in higher education where the responsibility of being present is no longer lawfully required. This task that the teachers […]

If learning is bringing out something of the learner, it implies that all knowledge is already somehow inside the student. This might work with regards to skills that are physical or practical like cycling or even a clinical skill like drawing blood. Surely if you are learning a more academic subject like physics or chemistry […]

Having looked at an example of the theories of instrumentalism and essentialism in a previous blog, I want to try and come to grips with posthumanism by using a similar format. Critical posthumanism is the way forward in the debate around digital education and the use of technology, according to Bayne in her article about […]

“Time is the most scarce resource” 1 in education, so technology will most likely be used by teachers if it saves them time. Or if it doesn’t take longer to get the job done The teachers I work with are mostly also clinicians, another group with a real shortage of time in their professions. Likely […]

  Over the last 9 months, my twins (currently in P6) have spent only four months actually going to school, being taught face to face while the rest has been spend at home, being home schooled. The term home schooling has taken on a completely different meaning over the last year; where it once pointed […]

The following is a critical discussion of a small portion of the report produced by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA); ‘Baker, T., Smith, L., & Anissa, N. (2019). Educ-ai-tion rebooted? Exploring the future of artificial intelligence in schools and colleges.’ In the report, the current situation in schools and colleges in […]

The idea of a change being an enhancement or not has stuck with me and reminded me of the film Wall- E (Pixar, 2018). In the film, the humans have used so many technological ‘enhancements’ that have they have become completely dependent on all technology, you could see it as a criticism on instrumentalism. I […]

Bayne’s article ‘What’s the matter with technologically enhanced teaching?’ makes some really interesting points about black boxing and ‘enhancement’ and how we can counter these. Black boxing is a term we have also seen in the other article for this week, by Hamilton and Friesen, but Bayne’s article takes their argument further.   Technology as […]

The outcome of the technology is pre-determined; it works exactly as intended.   There is an absence where man once was.   Technology will be used in a specific way.   Humans are part of technology in the next stage of evolution.      

The terms essentialism and instrumentalism are not to be considered theories according to Hamilton, Edward C., and Norm Friesen in their article from 2013: “Online Education: A Science and Technology Studies Perspective.” Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 39 (p 4), instead we should look at them as general orientations that have been represented in many […]