Technology is a wide-ranging term used to refer to the materials and machines that enable human activity. It can encompass everything from stone tools to nuclear weapons and space rockets. Technologies improve the human environment, solve problems, and propel social change, but they can also disrupt existing social hierarchies, cause pollution, or harm individuals or groups.
Unlike the rapid, sweeping transformations often seen in science and medicine, however, technology is typically developed step by step, with each success helping validate the underlying ideas, build a better understanding of what it is, and test it against reality. It is not uncommon for apparently promising early technologies to stall midway through their development – a phenomenon known as the ‘death valley’ that requires sustained efforts to overcome.
To be effective, most technologies must efficiently route people’s finite attention and energy. This often means that they must prioritize certain pathways and deprioritize others. For example, when digital cameras proliferated, they supplanted film and darkrooms as the route to photographs. This, in turn, deprioritized the comparatively inefficient but gratifying pathway of analogue photography.
Teachers must choose which technologies to use in their classrooms carefully if they are to maximize their efficiency and enhance students’ learning. Faculty can find a great deal of help with this by attending workshops, talking to colleagues, visiting other campuses and schools, and by using the many online resources available. Various campus support units are also available to provide ongoing training and assistance with specific technologies.