The 2016 National Educational Technology Plan mentions fostering creativity, collaboration, leadership, and critical thinking while engaging learners in complex, real-world challenges through a project-based learning approach (see http://tech.ed.gov/netp/learn ing/). The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21; see…

This article proposes that the widespread availability of wireless networks creates a case in which there is no real need for SIM cards. Recent technological developments offer the capability to outperform SIM cards and provide more innovative dimensions to current systems of mobility. In this context of changing realities in the domain of…

This design case (Boling, 2010) includes the challenges, considerations, and decisions associated with the design and development of a learning space/place (Dourish, 2006; Harrison & Dourish, 1996) focused on innovative, creative, and imaginative ways to transform teaching and learning with technology. The T.E.C.H. Playground in the College of…

Technology, thought of as the ensemble of utilities and devices and of their impact on our lives, proceeds in steps, each of which seems plausible. This kind of development also encourages the view that technology is value-neutral. It always can be used both for good and ill, and we decide how to use it. The production of food and the development…

Most current debate on instructional technology is characterized either by grandiose speculation on the salvation of education through automation (without specification of "what" and "how" technological innovations will actually be introduced in specific classroom situations, and how the changes will be financed), or by jargon-filled hairsplitting…

PowerPoint is roundly reviled and ridiculed, yet this technology enjoys universal popularity. This article reviews the criticisms of PowerPoint and its peer technologies, describes its affordances and advantages, and suggests innovative PowerPoint applications in instruction. Beyond garden-variety applications of PowerPoint, it may also be used to…

Scholars representing the field of communications were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Jeremy Bailenson, Patrice Buzzanell, Stanley Deetz, David Tewksbury, Robert J. Thompson, and…

Scholars representing the field of design were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Richard Buchanan, Nigel Cross, David Durling, Harold Nelson, Charles Owen, and Anna Valtonen. Scholars…

Taking a media ecology perspective, this article argues that technology cannot be neutral, because it is a form of change, and it has an inherent bias based on the properties of its materials and methods. Additionally, the application of a technology is an intrinsic part of the technology itself, as is technique, instructions, software, or…

Scholars representing the field of systems science were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Alexander Christakis, Debora Hammond, Michael Jackson, Alexander Laszlo, Ian Mitroff, Dave…

This article examines what "stakeholder groups" have to say about the nature, and indeed the meaning, of "technology." The author uncovers a variety of interpretations of the term "technology" and finds much disagreement and indeed confusion regarding whether concepts such as "science," "technology," and "engineering" are independent of each…

The digital revolution is transforming the ways in which knowledge and culture are produced, accessed, and, most of all, created and re-created. And as the Internet is nowadays generally acknowledged to be a public or a common good, this leads us to re-think the laws written for the 20th century technology, economy, and culture. Moreover, the…

Appointment of a national Commission on Instructional Technology under the Public Broadcasting Act points up the need for broad participation in defining agreeable boundaries of the field of instructional technology. The assignment is complicated by a posture of pessimism in a new power structure of instructional technology, or "learning systems,"…

While instructional design's technological roots have given it many approaches for process and product improvement, in most cases designers still rely on instructional forms that do not allow them to develop instruction of a quality consistent with that expressed by the field's visionary leaders. As a result, often the teachers and students using…

As a final part of this special issue, six Contributing Editors of the magazine were asked to review the six articles and to briefly reflect on themes across fields, on ideas or areas that might have the most potential, and/or to offer other new ideas for our field that the articles and issue overall triggered. These senior scholars in our field…