This paper reviews the effects of new technology on teaching and learning by considering examples of studies carried out with five kinds of teaching in five contexts. The five teaching situations are direct instruction, adjunct instruction, facilitating the skills of learning, facilitating social skills and widening learners' horizons. The five contexts are primary schools, secondary schools, higher education, special education and out of school. The aim of the paper is primarily to inform teachers about current work in these different areas.
IntroductionBacked up and stalled in a traffic jam, I found myself idly gazing through a window into a primary school classroom. What I saw astonished and alarmed me. I was astonished by the fact that the class was full of 5-year-olds busy writing on an electronic whiteboard. I was alarmed because I knew, as a Professor of Psychology in my 60s, that I could not do what these 5-year-olds were already skilled at. This set me ruminating. New technology has infiltrated practically everything that human beings do. We cannot travel, communicate, teach or learn without it. Most of my students at Keele have not known life without personal computers.