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This article is about ‘making’ in education. Often associated with software programming (as in ‘digital making’), making can also involve creating or modifying physical technological artefacts. In this paper, making is examined as a phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of culture, the economy, technology and education. The focus is not on the effects on cognitive gains or motivations, but on locating making in a social, historical and economic context. Making is also described as a form of ‘material connotation’, where connotation refers to the process through which the technical structure of artefacts is altered by culture and society. In the second part of the paper, the theoretical discussion is complemented by a case study in which making is described as a networked phenomenon where technology companies, consultants, volunteers, schools, and students were all implicated in turning a nebulous set of practices and discourses into an educational reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The supposed benefits of teachers' use of information and communications technology (digital technology) are well reported throughout the academic literature-most often involving issues of enhanced learning outcomes, increased pupil engagement and more efficient management and organisation of learning. This paper uses survey data from 683 teachers in 24 secondary schools across the UK to analyse the factors influencing how these benefits are being experienced. In particular, the paper explores the complex relationships between teachers' perceptions of technology-related benefits and a range of individual, classroom, school and system-level issues. A number of mediating issues and influences are identified and discussed throughout these analyses. In particular, it is suggested that teachers' perceptions of the benefits of using technology are influenced more by institutional rather than individual characteristics. A number of possible reasons are discussed, highlighting the importance of social and cultural contexts of digital technology use in education. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic So far, research on teachers' perceptions of the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has shown that while some teachers effortlessly 'assimilate' and incorporate digital technologies into their teaching, and are more inclined to see the benefits of technology use in their classrooms, many others are often 'blamed' for failing to see the 'obvious' benefits of ICTs in the classroom., Descriptions and analyses currently available therefore position particular groups and 'types' of teachers as having rather uneasy relationships with technology, while at the same time representing technology use as the most rational and obvious choice for all teachers, irrespective of social and cultural differences., What this paper adds The paper argues that there is a need for more attention to be paid to how digital technologies are being used between different schools and, more problematically, to explore the relationship between teachers' perceptions and a range of individual and institutional factors., The paper attempts to move beyond the 'discourses of deficiency' that characterise some schoolteachers as lacking individual attributes, capabilities and the required rational mindset to appreciate the 'compelling potential' of ICTs., In particular, this paper explores in more detail the complex relationships between the benefits of technology use as perceived by schoolteachers and the various individual, classroom, school and system-level issues that may underlie these perceptions. The findings suggest that broader contextual and cultural dimensions may mediate and significantly alter individual perceptions., Implications for practice and/or policy This paper points to the need to develop a more rounded picture of the relationship(s) between the social contexts that surround schools, teachers and technology use. Indeed, there is arguably a need to move beyond 'blaming' certain groups of teachers for not making best use of technology (ie, those who are older, female and so on)., As such, the data presented in this paper support the emerging argument to move beyond placing 'dangerous moral imperatives' onto individual teachers to change their practices and processes in line with the assumed 'affordances' of digital technology., Individual teachers or whole schools could draw on the social shaping perspective and the findings presented in this paper to articulate a more critically minded set of responses in relation to digital technologies in their contexts, resisting individualising and blaming discourses that unfairly position them as the weak link in an otherwise linear, robust and unproblematic chain of deterministic assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the deliberately speculative question of 'What might the school of 2030 be like?', with a specific focus on the influences of digital technologies. The article adopts the methodological approach of 'social science fiction' to explore the ways in which digital technologies might be used in one Australian high school in 2030 (Lakeside), and what this might mean for the people whose lives are enmeshed with these technologies. Through the co-construction of five social science fiction 'vignettes' about life within Lakeside, the article considers the increasing prevalence of dataveillance, digital deskilling and the de-territorialization of schooling. The article then goes on to consider changing relationships between time/place, material and coded structures, as well as the increasingly platformized and data-driven nature of schooling in the 2020s. The article ends by considering the ways in which critical scholars can continue to use the methodological approach of social science fiction writing with regard to unpacking the politics of digital education futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]