My experiences with educational technology have been vast, for the most part.
In the early 90s, I attended an alternative school where Nautikos, a computer-based learning program developed by Odyssey Learning Systems, was used. It used a pre-test to identify topics students had already mastered, then automatically exempted them from those topics so they could focus solely on their knowledge gaps.
Before reading Weller (2020), I hadn’t thought about this experience as part of the field’s history. It was merely part of my own history, within my personal education and learning journey. Weller’s historical account has prompted me to reconsider earlier experiences with technology-supported learning and look back on them differently.
What I found compelling across these chapters was how much history sits behind the technologies we now take for granted, and how many ideas we associate with contemporary educational technology were already being explored through earlier technologies. Weller reconstructs the field by situating contemporary technologies within a longer history of experimentation and development. His discussion of historical amnesia also made me think about how quickly earlier technologies and ideas can disappear from view as new ones emerge. At the same time, his attention to the limits and gaps in that history made me think about the histories that sit outside the dominant narrative—the ones that don’t make it into these conversations.
That is where my interest in an Indigenous parallel arises. I would like to know what an Indigenous history of technology and education might offer when placed alongside the history Weller traces. I have not yet thoroughly examined that link, but Ruth’s (2020) work on Indigenous wisdom, technology, and education gives me a starting point. I am interested to see what comes to light.
References
Ruth, D. (2020). Indigenous wisdom, capital, technology and education. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 55, 405–422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-020-00181-1
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of Ed Tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01