IP #1: Educational Media Ecology

Media ecology according to Strate (as quoted in Lum, 2000) involves a critical interdisciplinary perspective and is fundamentally concerned with the symbiotic relationship between the media and the environment – physical spaces, human communication and behavior, and various forces in society at large. It is more than just a study of the relationship and effects between technology and human behavior, but also the organizing principles that underscore each technology, resulting in ideologies that condition human ideas of life and survival; the concrete and practical ways biological and technological habitats influence the human species (Mumford as quoted in Strate & Lum, 2000). In this sense, an educational media ecology necessitates an interpretation of forces beyond the simple assumed connections between educators and learners, between schools and tools.

Mumford’s intricate views on media ecology were influenced by Geddes’ human ecology — his philosophy extended from orality to electricity, importantly, not from an academic pedestal but significantly in touch with practical regionalism (as quoted in Strate & Lum, 2000). That is to say, the effect of these tools alter and have a real and lasting impact on society, thus they need to be studied and controlled. In this sense, Mumford’s technological narrative does not make him technologically deterministic, rather, “man is the unchanging principle against the flux of environmental change” (Kuhns as quoted in Strate & Lum, 2000).

Education does not take place in a vacuum, neither is it unplaced (Blenkinskop & Scutt as quoted in de Castell et al., 2014). The physical space in which educational interactions are housed in can be argued to be pedagogical in itself, predisposing its participants to particular kinds of thinking and action. To try to separate the technological from the biological would be artificial (Mumford as quoted in Strate & Lum, 2000). In other words, the place and form in which education takes place results in more than just the mere activity of knowledge transfer from one individual to another. It dictates, and carries consequences, to participants’ responses to their surroundings – be it places, tools, or human connections; a “techno-organic” interplay (Mumford as quoted in Strate & Lum, 2000).

To be predisposed to a way of behaving is to be encouraged and restricted at the same time. What education is, or has been, is a simultaneous reflection of what it is not, or prohibits. Educational media ecology thus reveals volumes about the effects of education beyond the obvious. Such an ecology should include a consideration of the design of physical spaces, both the material and sensory sphere of structures, in understanding the spatial and behavioral connections that take place in a lived environment; the media artifacts that intertwine with social and educational practice, comprising the transactional relationship between technology and individuals and its effects on human perception and behaviour; the use of digital affordances and their underlying pedagogies that govern teaching and learning practices; the dynamics of consumption and production that govern educational activities; and patterns of relationships and power that condition participants and the overriding influence of such relationships that take effect outside of educational spaces.

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