Learning Identities in a Digital Age ─ Rethinking creativity, education and technology

Over four decades, educators have been bewitched by the possibilities of making digital technologies do things that might support and enhance learning experiences, from Ping Pong to iPads. They have also, however, been bothered by the seemingly slow take-up of these possibilities in mainstream education; by the lack of congruence between formal curriculum and assessment requirements and learning experiences with digital technologies; and the socioeconomic and political challenges of digital inclusion and sustainability in local and global arenas. There is increased concern about the new media environment and contexts for commerce, consumption, sexualisation and risk.

This book suggests that being bewitched and bothered might be useful starting points for being bewildered in pathless places, looking for direction. Being bewildered, however, can be a creative and generative state in which we look afresh at where we are, and think about different possibilities for moving forward. We are able to ask telling questions which allow us to look critically at how and why some of the innovations in the use of digital tools in education have flourished, withered and mattered in different contexts and cultures.

The book makes a distinctive contribution to the current debates about new times and educational futures, in that it adopts a generational conversation between the authors. Avril Loveless has been engaged in the practice and research of learning and teaching with digital technologies for nearly thirty years, and has played a role in and witnessed the practices, claims and counter claims developed locally and internationally. Ben Williamson has spent a decade involved in research on media and technology for learning, with particular projects focused on curriculum development for the electronic era and children 's digital literacies in and out of school contexts. Their different starting points, contexts and views of futures for creativity and education offer challenges to each other, and novel perspectives on some of the questions raised and discussed. Whilst acknowledging the persistence of sticky social, cultural and political issues that cut across this conversation, the book examines the emergence (or construction) of new and allegedly generational changes being experienced by young people in a persistently networked, perpetually connected and increasingly globalized digital world where distinctions between virtual and material life seem to be collapsing, and where political and commercial interests are merging. This youthful generation, it has been argued, is growing up in a freshly democratic and de-centralized environment; characterized less by personal narratives and more by attributes of distributed intelligence, dispersed affinities, crowd-sourcing and collective thinking. These generational changes, though bewildering, suggest radical new and critical understandings of education and learning are required.

Avril Loveless is Professor of Education and Head of Education Research at the University of Brighton, UK, with interests in creativity and pedagogy.

Ben Williamson is Lecturer of Education at the University of Stirling, UK, with particular interests in childhood and new media, curriculum innovation, and science, technology and society.