Technology and Education: A Broad Perspective

This paper examines technology and its place in modern education in the context of human cultural accumulation processes, where memories, formed as a result of the interaction of novel information with long-term memory, may be stored externally and also transmitted across generations. The learning of technology, considered in a broad sense as environmental manipulation, is tied to cultural accumulation processes and historical practice, but the application of technology across knowledge domains reflects its use prior to the development of subjects as taught in modern educational institutions. Although the use and effectiveness of technology in education is an important issue for the modern teacher, there is little in the way of effective scientific frameworks that allow the modern teacher to compare educational approaches and their effectiveness in teaching practice, and much less in the way of frameworks that can, in turn, be applied to assessing the use and effectiveness of technology. This paper explores the development of such a framework, based in a little-used view of information and suggests how this framework may be used to examine the role of technology in human learning and memory and to examine its intersection with education and teaching.