Lesson 7 - Choosing Media

6.1. A Volatile and Comprehensive Medium

It is debatable whether computing should be considered a medium, but I am using the term broadly, and not in the technical sense of writing code. I prefer ‘computing’ to ‘ICTs’ (information and communications technologies). Computing is a medium while ICT refers more to the technologies used. The Internet in particular is an all-embracing medium that accommodates text, audio, video, and computing, as well as providing other elements such as distributed communication and access to educational opportunities. Computing is also still an area that is fast developing, with new products and services emerging all the time. Indeed, I will treat recent developments in social media and some emerging technologies separately from computing, although technically they are sub-categories of computing. Once again, though, social media and some emerging technologies contain affordances that are not so prevalent in more conventional computing-based learning environments.

In such a volatile medium, it would be foolish to be dogmatic about unique media characteristics, but once again, the purpose of this lesson is not to provide a definitive analysis, but a way of thinking about technology that will facilitate an instructor’s choice and the use of technology. The focus is: what are the pedagogical affordances of computing that are different from those of other media (other then the important fact that it can embrace all the other media characteristics)?

Although there has been a great deal of research into computers in education, there has been less focus on the specifics of its pedagogical media characteristics, although a great deal of interesting research and development has taken place and continues in human-machine interaction and to a lesser extent in artificial intelligence. Thus I am relying more on analysis and experience than research on the unique affordances or characteristics of computing as an educational medium in this section.