User:Palithae/sandbox

Learning technologies can be seen from a number of perspectives including historical and  social. History of technologies can teach up a lot about what has gone before and what to expect. Technologies evolve at a remarkable speed. The average smartphone today would have more computing power than Apollo 11 did. Human beings not only adapt to these technological developments but also shape how technologies develop. Quite often as educators we depend on the availability of technologies in the consumer market to adapt for our teaching and learning activities. It is rare that technologies are developed just for the purpose of teaching and learning. Leading manufacturers of hardware, software and internet services such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google invent and produce their products for a consumer and corporate market. Even VLEs such as Blackboard have been produced for corporate market in the first place.

An example of social shaping of technology is taking selfies



Therefore, it is important to keep track of what is available out there, what has gone before so that we can take stock of what sort of technologies that are