Distrusting Educational Technology

Neil Selwyn is Professor of Education at Monash University, Australia.

"Neil Selwyn’s book is a superb analysis of the key reasons to ‘distrust’ many aspects of the use and application of technology as represented to teachers, students and educationalists. His book is not a simple or crude polemic attack directed at ‘technology’ digital or otherwise, it is in fact a work that promotes thinking and provokes reflection on many of our assumptions regarding the usefulness and application benefit for both the individual student and society of assuming that technology as such is a politically – ideologically free agent in all our lives and simply a ‘good thing’." - John Senior, Gifted Education International“Beginning with Thomas Edison's 1913 proclamation that motion picture machines would replace books in the schools, a never-ending stream of boosters and self-styled reformers have sought to ‘revolutionize’ education through massive infusions of technology. Neil Selwyn's masterful study examines today's leading contenders – social media, gaming, open source, and others – revealing the dubious ideological, economic, and political agendas at the basis of their schemes. Clearly the best book on educational technology of this generation, it will shake the digital establishment to its core.” - Langdon Winner, author of The Whale and the Reactor and Thomas Phelan Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA"Distrusting Educational Technology is exactly the kind of book that anyone concerned with major current trends in educational reform, policy, and practice needs at this time. It illuminates crucial questions and raises important cautions that tend to be ignored as we all too often assume that a technology driven education will solve most of our problems. Neil Selwyn has much to teach us about the dangers of easy technical solutions to complex social and educational problems." - Michael W. Apple, author of Can Education Change Society? and John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

• Preface and acknowledgement1 Why distrust educational technology?2 Understanding educational technology as ideology3 Distrusting ‘virtual’ technologies in education4 Distrusting ‘open’ technologies in education5 Distrusting ‘games’ technologies in education 6 Distrusting ‘social’ technologies in education 7 Educational technology – continuities, contradictions, and conflicts 8 Educational technology – is there an alternative?References