Chapter 9: The Secretary and the Software: On the Need for Integrating Software Analysis into Educational Spaces

Learning technologies are not new. They’re surprisingly old. Technology, by which I mean the use of an instrument to extend human beings’ natural ability (Ong, 1982), has informed education not for many decades but for thousands of years (Havelock, 1986). As Buckingham (2008) reminds us, “Education inevitably uses technologies of many kinds, and it has always done so: the book, the pencil and the chalkboard are technologies just as much as the computer, the video camera or the latest mobile communication device” (p. 176). Still, despite a lack of newness, the speeches of policymakers and the promises of companies offering the latest “innovative” resources to schools seem to indicate that recent technologies, by their very nature, improve teaching and learning. This conclusion is utterly inaccurate. The learning technologies to which education reformers increasingly refer are beyond the books, pencils, and chalkboards of which Buckingham speaks. These new technologies are powered by software, making software something which we must discuss openly and critically. Software can no longer be a frightening technical word lost on educators. It must roll off the tongue lightly and be the subject of heavy inspection.