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Technology And Its Impact On The Classroom And The Individual Learner And Pay Essay

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Additionally, Januszewski and Molenda (2008) who suggested the gold-standard definition of educational technology, stated that the focus of EdTech research is now on the “appropriate application of processes and technologies” (p. 2) to enhance learning. Two things can be inferred from this statement: 1) the question is how to use technology, rather than what technology to use; and 2) the focus is to enhance learning. To find answer to this question, EdTech researchers need to look beyond the classroom and the individual learner and pay attention to the ways technology is being used in the real-world settings. They should take into account the “social, political, economic, cultural and historical contexts within which educational technology use (and non-use) is located” (Selwyn, 2010, p. 66). Therefore, instead of assuming inherent benefits in a particular technology – what Smith (1994) called “technological determinism” – and carrying out rigid, predictive experiments to confirm its impact, we need more research exploring the socially shaped nature of technology as it happens in the real, messy contexts (Selwyn, 2010). This is an important shift for the field, because the majority of the studies in the past decades has been on how technologies should be used for learning or what could happen with digital technologies, while the reasons and the ways technologies are actually being used in the wider social contexts have remained under-studied. This is particularly relevant to

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