The Growing Influence of âThe Digitalâ
Developments in digital technology have formed the basis of many advances in society over the past 30 years. Since the 1980s, many commentators have detailed the growth in the power and diversity of numerous digital developments including computers, mobile devices and the Internet. More recently, discussion about the ways in which social media, cloud computing and other âWeb 2.0â tools have influenced society have become commonplace (e.g., Castells 2013).
Neil Selwynâs (2010) critique of this âdigital ageâ summarises the tenor of both popular and academic perceptions of digital technology which âtend to be informed by a notion that the development of digital technology represents a distinctively new and improved set of social arrangements in relation to preceding âpre-digitalâ timesâ (p. 7). Selwynâs comments reflect earlier accounts of the perceived importance and influence of digital technologies such as Steve Woolgarâs (2002, p. 3) suggestion that the introduction of digital technologies implies âthat something new, different, and (usually) better is happeningâ or Murdockâs (2004, p. 20) âpervasive sense of leaving the past behindâ. Indeed, the digital remediation (Chadwick 2013) of everyday life has reportedly influenced a wide variety of social processes and practices including education where the ubiquitous presence of technology in our society ânot only changes teaching and learning but also the curriculumâ (Voogt et al. 2012, p. 119).
It only requires a cursory glance of popular and academic reports to find examples of the influence of social media on a wide variety of shared interactions including the use of Twitter and Facebook to organise student demonstrations against the construction of power plants in Patagonia (Scherman et al. 2015), the impact of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter in the collaborative rewriting of the Icelandic Constitution (Valtysson 2014) or changes in the way we conceptualise intimacy and friendship in technologically mediated personal relationships (Chambers 2013). While there is little doubt that social media platforms have made valuable contributions to social processes and practices that can enhance individual meaning making and action (W.L. Bennett and Segerberg 2011), research has also illustrated the complex, âmessyâ and sometimes subversive ways in which digital technologies have been integrated into contemporary society.
As Nick Couldry (2012, p. 10) reflects:
in Iraq in the early 1990s, the requirement that typewriters be registered with the authorities was still plausible means of state censorship, and television channels were few and heavily influenced by the state; by 2009, 470 Arabic language satellite TV channels were available in the Arab world and the recent spread of web enabled mobile phones has made state censorship still more difficult.
In contrast to the âpre-digitalâ political environment in which censorship and political control were comparatively easy to maintain, the impact of social media in the âArab Springâ, which began in December 2010, was quite dazzling. More than three million tweets and thousands of blog posts reportedly shaped political debate and social activism (Hussain and Howard 2013), providing a clear example of the ways in which digital technologies can and do change social processes and practices.
In contrast to the extreme examples of the impact of digitally based social media shaping political outcomes, some commentators have highlighted the everyday affordances of digital technologies, digital communication and interaction in seemingly pedestrian or routine aspects of contemporary life. For example, advertising materials for Christine Hineâs guide for Internet ethnographers claimed:
The internet has become embedded into our daily lives, no longer as an esoteric phenomenon, but instead an unremarkable way of carrying out our interactions with one another. Online and offline are interwoven in everyday experience. Using the internet has become accepted as a way of being present in the world, rather than a means of accessing some discrete virtual domain. (Bloomsbury Publishing 2015)
The everyday interconnections between online and offline are not only evident in the ways in which we are entertained, communicate and shop but the everyday use of digital technologies is also evident in the ways in which emerging technologies have been used to build on a history of initiatives intended to exploit available technologies to expand the reach of higher education (Universities UK 2013).
Recently, content from many university courses has been made accessible through the introduction of massive open online courses (MOOCs) which provide access to free tertiary education for anyone with internet access. On the surface, MOOCs appear to have had a dramatic impact on the provision of tertiary education with three MOOC providers (Udacity, Coursera and edX) offering nearly 700 MOOCs to more than eight million users worldwide (Cusakck 2014). Indeed, some MOOC enthusiasts such as Anant Agarwal reportedly have been so bold as to suggest that MOOCs will âreinvent education ⊠to transform universities. Itâs going to democratise education on a global scale. Itâs the biggest innovation to happen in education for 200 yearsâ (reported in Cadwalladr 2012). Despite Agarwalâs claim that MOOCs may be the greatest innovation since the invention of the pencil, others have suggested otherwise.
Research has found that completion rates in MOOCs are very lowâgenerally between 5 % and 12 % (Cusakck 2014; Koller et al. 2013). These kinds of statistics and other critiques of MOOCs such as that offered by Jenny Mackness and colleagues (2013) that have seen the Presidentâs Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2013) advise Barack Obama that the possibilities offered by MOOCs âhave yet to be realizedâ (p. 1) and âmany questions and challenges remainâ (p. 3). Phillip Dawson (2013) has raised similar concerns suggesting that providing higher education to all is more complicated than enrolling people in a course. Dawson supports his argument with data that show more than 90 % of MOOC students dropping out, while Australian universities maintain a 90 % retention rate, with universities, colleges and technical training institutions in the UK, Norway and France all retaining more than 80 % of students (Grove 2014).
There appear, therefore, to be tensions between the rhetoric and reality surrounding MOOCs; that the opportunity for changes similar to those seen through the use of social media have materialized and the use of this form of digital technology is somewhat âmessierâ if one digs below the surface (e.g., see Selwyn et al. 2015). Looking deeper into academic reports on the use of social media and other forms of Web 2.0 technology, similar cautionary or critical accounts can also be found (e.g., see De Zwart et al. 2011; Taddei and Contena 2013), suggesting that, to borrow a phrase from danah boyd (2014), itâs complicated.
The pace of development of a new, digitally mediated social order and educational landscape has challenged academics to analyse changes and developments in a reasoned or coherent manner. This rapid rate of change coupled with the pervasiveness of digital technology in our contemporary lives suggests âthe Internetâs consequences for social theory are therefore radicalâ (Couldry 2012, p. 2); this is true not only for the examples already outlined in this chapter, but it is also clearly evident as an issue in school contexts which are the focus of this book.
Schools and Digital Technology: Policies and Practices
School campuses are now awash with digital hardware, and growing amounts of schoolwork are now carried out on a âvirtualâ basis. Teachers, often from developed Western nations, have been seduced to take up digital technologies through advertising campaigns sponsored by hardware and software companies, influenced by aspirational statements made by political parties and compelled to achieve digital technology standards set by teacher registration organisations and extensive financial investment by schools in digital infrastructure coupled with a raft of professional learning opportunities. These occasions have reinforced the assumption that digital technologies have the capacity to enhance society generally and teaching and learning more specifically. As Conole et al. (2008, p. 511) and her associates indicated:
[digital technologies] seem to offer the potential for âpedagogical innovativeâ (Sharples 2002) or are suggested as acting as âcatalysts for changeâ. These assumptions are reflected in the rhetoric associated with e-learning policy directives internationally but arguably are not reflected in actual changes t...