Schools and computers: Tales of a digital romance

This chapter is concerned with the way schools and school systems in the over-developed world have come to terms with computers and related technologies and, particularly, recurring patterns in terms of how schools’ relationships with computers are considered and evaluated. The patterns I will describe are quite remarkable in that they have repeated over the past 30 years, and, as I will argue, will likely continue into the future. They are essentially patterns of response: response to whatever the producers of digital products for educational purposes place in front of schools; response to anxiety about keeping up with the schools-next-door and, ironically, response to concerns that, left unchecked, technologies could disrupt the patterns of schooling and, by extension, student learning. Even though the nature of the pro-offered products (and the associated technologies) has changed greatly since the early 1980s, the ways in which schools and school systems have responded to “the new” and “the latest” remains largely unchanged. I explore the way these patterns constrain debates about underlying technologies (which I prefer to call computing and communication technologies) and the value of taking a fresh look at the school/computer relationships.