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1. Great info for policy and big picture
   This is a great book to think of the great debate around technology being a change agent and qualifier in education. I’m curious how the period of online/distance learning changes the debate.

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2. our own lack of imagination
   In response to the question of the title of the book the answer is some good. It won’t solve many of the basic problems of course and as Neil Selwyn says there is much to agree with and disagree with in this book. I remember Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You. In that book it critiqued the idea that TV was dumbing us down and computer games were a waste of time arguing instead that the complexity of those today force the audience to deal with increasing complexity forcing an improvement in mental acuity. Another issue I think is our own lack of imagination which will be remedied by someone coming up with something we don’t expect. I think of the advances made in Virtual Reality since even just this last summer. How is that going to impact education and human experience in general? Try on an Oculus Rift and see what I mean. VR is beyond what we can imagine at the moment but it is here and doing stuff to us. But this book is very thought provoking and goes over many of the interesting new developments and puts them into an overall perspective regarding the future of education.

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3. ..
   This is a good place to find the questions on this area collected together. Fit those of us in colleges and universities the issues in k-12 are both revealing and a distraction. This is compounded by ignoring the history of the impact of similar changes in culture and its impact on education like the printing press….

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4. Clear, readable explanation of positive and negatives
   When the title of a book or article (or a click-bait link) takes the form of a question, it’s usually a good rule of thumb to assume that the answer is going to be “No.” But that’s not the case here. The author doesn’t seem to have an axe to grind, and he gives an excellent overview of the positive and negative aspects of technology as they apply to education. He considers four areas: does technology make education more democratic, more personalized, more “calculable” (i.e. can you evaluate the results better), and more commercial (i.e. does it provide business opportunities)? For each of these issues, he provides a clear and readable description of the benefits of technology and, conversely, of the possible drawbacks. A good introduction for the general reader: I came away with the feeling that I had learned a lot and had a good picture of the pros and cons of technology here. Other books I’ve seen on this related specifically to issues in the US, but this one (the author is Australian) is informative about what’s going on everywhere in today’s globalized society.

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5. Technology Amplifies Prexisting Differences In Wealth & Acievement
   The author answers his titled question: yes/no/all points in between. In other words, there is no easy definitive answer. Rather, the author provides a template of answers that require the reader to think otherwise, than he or she is currently viewing the subject matter relating to the subject: ed tech. This book, he states/takes the hype of education and technology seriously.What I got from the reading of this book was that society desperately needs a world other than that of extremely concentrated global capital; we need one instead, of free access and control over knowledge, information, and communication – wresting control away from capital and into the hands of the people/not the current confederacy of dunces – the less than 1%.No more is this more paramount than in the education of our children, their children and their grandchildren. Currently those confederacy of dunces are harvesting the last pockets of wealth in our country in healthcare and education. They are wiping out what’s left of the middle class. For example, the standardized tests are geared to the individual student; it is the SAT/ACT on steroids. Once the student picks an answer, the next question asked is based on the previous answer. This process expands exponentially, as more & more prompted questions are answered to harvest vast data on your children, as well as profiling their personalities. Presumably for sale to many and all vendors.The author points out that because educational futures are directing billions of dollars of investment we need to become involved in looking to develop more credible alternatives. The author also points out that people are now consuming media at an exponential growth due to mobile telephony, smartphones, tablets and other computerized devices. In all these ways, and more, many important elements of education are now profoundly digital. He also shows that digital education is entwined with matters of global economics and politics, as well as ongoing changes in what counts as knowledge, skills and learning. All told, digital technology is an increasingly integral element of education in the broadest sense.The author focuses on the ways in which this potential for radical change might actually be realized. To what extent is digital technology really changing education – and is this always in our best interest.One theme I especially like was how digital technology amplifies perexisting differences in wealth and achievement. Digital technology has put the continually expanding inequality gap on steroids.The author, in my opinion, was just too apolitical for my tastes. Although he did come down somewhat on the student loan debt; he wasn’t as hardcore as I would have liked in the obvious capital controls of our education process[not to mention the rest of society as a whole].P.S. If the reader would like a book on education that gets down to the brass tacks pick up: Rotten To The (Common) Core: Public Schooling, Standardized Test, and the Surveillance State by Joseph P Farrell.

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6. Il testo affronta in modo equilibrato la questione dell’uso e diffusione delle tecnologie a scuola. offre spunti di riflessioni per insegnanti e docenti

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7. An okay book for someone reading about the issue for the first time. Very repetitive.

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8. A very basic breakdown of Neil’s core ideas. I read a lot of Neil’s work for my course and I find treating this as a supplement to my weekly assignments an effective way to get ahead in our discussions.

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9. Really easy read. Discusses up to date issues and gives a good overview of current thinking.

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10. An intriguing exercise in critical thinking Selwyn looks carefully- and holistically- at the impact of digital technology in our educational processes and asks some salient questions about it’s overall validity. No one doubts how useful modern technology is to all of us in all walks of life, but we have become so enamoured by it, we currently accept it’s application anytime anywhere anyhow without question. What this book is, is a healthy step back in order to take a more balanced, analytical view and as such, asks some awkward questions. Not all of them are answered, but our culture is at the stage at the moment, where it needs the wherewithal to at least start and ask questions about the hegemony of digital technology in our society, and this book is a snappy, erudite and vital step in that direction. If you want your thinking challenged and some food for thought away from the tech-mad mainstream, this book is well worth a read.

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