In a basic sense, ‘education’ can be understood as the conditions and arrangements where learning takes place. Yet education is not simply a technical matter of facilitating people’s learning. In addition, education also involves broader functions of ‘qualification’, ‘socialisation’ and ‘subjectification’. Education is therefore concerned with helping people gain a sense of who they are, and to act autonomously and critically in the world. These broader concerns tend to be overlooked in many discussions of technology and education.

Any situation where formal, face-to-face education provision is combined with an element of technology-mediated learning. In a blended learning situation, digital technology is used to provide students with self-directed and/or a-synchronous learning experiences. The ‘blend’ between face-to-face and technology-mediated education will vary according to the type of learning and level of the students. This is sometimes referred to as ‘hybrid’, ‘flexible’ or ‘hyflex’ learning.

The idea that all students in a class can make free use of the personal digital devices rather than these devices being restricted or banned altogether. The pluralised version ‘Bring Your Own Devices’ acknowledges the increased use of ‘second screens’ (e.g. using a smartphone at the same time as a laptop), while ‘Bring Your Own Technology’ extends the concept to personal internet connections, applications and other aspects of digital technology beyond the actual devices. All of these conditions extend the original ‘1-to-1’ concept where every student has a device to use for themselves.

‘Datafication’ is a term that describes the ways that digital technologies are associated with the generation of ‘big data’ sets that can be analysed to make predictions, identify trends and generally inform what takes place in society. Crucially, a key part of this datafication is the ways that digital technologies produce masses of ‘trace’ data during their use. This digital data is generated at scale, circulated at speed and processed on a real-time basis. In educational terms, then, datafication describes the ways in which any school or university is now a place where massive amounts of data are being generated and systematically collected in order to make sense of the people within it, and the things that they are doing. In this sense, datafication refers the recent trend in education to turn vast amounts of activity and human behaviour into data points that can be tracked, collected and analysed.

The idea that education can be arranged and provided outside of the confines of education institutions such as schools and universities. Deschooling describes how learning can take place through temporary, autonomous and non-hierarchical networks. Deschooling was popularised through the work of the philosopher Ivan Illich. Illich reasoned that individuals in educational institutions are discouraged from taking responsibility for their own self-development, and also from engaging with other potential opportunities for learning within their immediate communities.

The use of digital technologies to allow students to engage with instructive materials (such as lectures, set readings, tests) outside of the classroom. Most common is the use of digital video and digital readings. Teachers are then free to use face-to-face classes to focus on student-centred activities such as problem-solving, group-work, discussion, discovery-led research and personalised support and guidance.

The institutionally sponsored provision of learning – that is, learning that is structured and often assessed and credentialised. There is a wide range of formal education, most obviously the compulsory forms of school-based learning for children and young people. Similar types of formal post-compulsory learning also exist through colleges, universities and various types of distance education. Formal education can also be found outside of schools and universities, in adult education and work-based training settings.

Learning that occurs during the course of everyday life. Informal learning usually is not classroom based, and has no curriculum, assessment or formal ‘teacher’. Informal learning is unstructured and controlled by the individual learner. Common forms of informal learning include work-based ‘learning on the job’ as well as learning that is stimulated by general interests, pursuits and hobbies.

The idea that learning now relates primarily to the ability to access and use distributed information on a ‘just-in-time’ basis. Rather than knowing and retaining information on a long-term basis, connectivism describes how individuals develop personal, meaningful networks of learning. From this perspective, ‘learning’ can be seen as an individual’s ability to connect to specialised information nodes and sources when required. Similarly, being ‘knowledgeable’ can be seen as the ability to nurture and maintain these connections.

An extension of constructivist theories of learning, associated primarily with the work of Seymour Papert. Constructionism describes how learning takes place through the exploratory building of objects that are themselves capable of doing something. By building an object and then manipulating it to do something, individuals are able to learn from the process of thinking about how to get something else to think. Constructionists talk of supporting individuals’ conversations with artefacts, thereby framing technology as a tool to learn with rather than learn from.

Theories of learning associated primarily with the work of psychologists such as Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. Constructivist theories describe learning that is problem-based and building upon an individual’s previous experience and knowledge. In this sense, learning is rooted in processes of exploration, inquiry, interpretation and meaning-making. Constructivist theories portray learning as an active process where individuals construct their own perspective of the world through personal experiences.

Online platforms for information and resource sharing, as well as the organisation of curriculum and pedagogy. In essence, these systems replicate the main functions of the classroom and school/university in digital form. These systems support the provision of learning content and other resources, communication between students, teachers and administrators, the submission and assessment of coursework, and the monitoring of learning progress.

Recently the ‘maker’ label has been appropriated by all manner of classroom activities – from the teaching of computer programming through to cooking and gardening. In contrast, ‘maker technology’ is specifically defined in this article as:

1. the use of digital technologies to facilitate the making of physical objects; and/or
2. the making of physical objects that incorporate some form of digital technology.

The use of 3D printers in conjunction with CAD (computer-assisted design) software is an obvious example of this first type of ‘making’. Conversely, the incorporation of conductive thread and programmable microcomputers into a textiles product is an example of the latter. An important aspect of all digital maker practices is a ‘DIY’ craft approach that emphasises experimentation and ‘tinkering’ both with code and manual production. Maker technologies are also aligned closely with open-source and hacker practices that support the free sharing of designs and code that can be re-used and improved on by others.

MOOCs are courses provided to masses of online students for little or no cost. These often involve the use of video lectures accompanied by online quizzes and discussion spaces. Through the rise of providers such as Udacity, edX, Coursera and Futurelearn, MOOCs offer university-affiliated courses to classes of thousands of students at a time.

The open education resource movement supports free access to information in the form of web-based digital resources for learning, teaching and research. These resources are usually placed in the public domain at no cost for free use or repurposing by others. These resources can range from full courses to individual lessons or sessions. The idea of OERs relates to the broader philosophies of ‘open source’ software development, as well as philosophies of ‘open education’ and ‘open society’.

Online platforms and applications that depend on the collective efforts of their users. These technologies are distinguished by their capacity to support forms of ‘mass socialisation’. Many of the most popular social media platforms and applications rely on openly shared ‘user generated’ content that is authored, curated, critiqued and reconfigured by a mass of users. In this way, social media bring an interactive and participatory ethos to the way that digitals are used.

The commonplace idea that digital technologies offer ready solutions, correctives and ‘fixes’ to existing education problems. This way of thinking is evident in the transformative ways that emerging technologies such as AI and ‘big data’ are currently being imagined as impacting on education – echoing similar claims for previous educational technologies such as computers, television and radio. Of course, attempts to use the ‘power’ of technology in order to solve problems that are non-technological in nature often come up against a number of recurring issues. For example, technologies tend to produce uneven results, rarely ending in similar outcomes for all of the population and often replacing one social problem with another. At best technology-based interventions tend to deal only with the surface manifestations of a problem rather than its roots

The commonplace assumption that technology is a primary force that determines the nature of society. Technology is seen as an autonomous force that drives social progress and changes in society. Whatever we do, we cannot stop technology having a certain and inevitable effect on our lives. Despite its popularity, technological determinism is felt by some critical commentators to be a reductive way of understanding technology and society.