I believe the quote below represents my views on the importance of knowing and understanding the history of technology.

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”-Karl Marx

As a proponent of technology, I still have many concerns.   Technolgoy can present a financial burden to the purchaser.   Though new moblile technologies such as the iPad are less expensive than traditional desktop computers, their widespread availability to children remains a challenge in the context of both education budgets and with the financial means of parents. The unfortunate consequene of this is a divide among the school and home literacy practices of students; students that have  the new technology will be the literacy “havles”, and those who do not will be the new literacy “have-nots” (Lacina, 2006).

Additonally I am concerned as to who is devloping educational technology.   More often than not, it is usually large companies that often do not have educators leading the direction.   I believe educators need to determine the authority from which our educational practices our based. Luke (2000) explains,

As we are all being pushed onto the on-ramps of the information superhighway, I think it is crucial for educators of all levels of schooling to take charge of reshaping curriculum and pedagogy in relation to IT.  If we don’t, corporate software developers will maintain their control over content design that invariably shapes how and what we teach (p. 99).

References

Lacina, J. (2006). Learning To Read and Write Using the Internet: Sites You Don’t Want To Miss. Childhood Education, 83(2), 117.

Luke, C. (2000). What Next? Toddler Netizens, Playstation Thumb, Techno-literacies. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 1, 95.