Definitions and Knowledge in Successive Educational Media

Handout for the 2005 Conference on Pedagogies and Learning: Meanings under the Microscope, held at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. A framework was sought for understanding concepts in new disciplines in their full dimensionality. Citing Plato's Socrates, the nature of knowledge was examined, locating it not in information transmission but in the expertise of the knower. The presentation further argued through the example of e-learning that, as accelerating technological transformation confronts all fields including education, each successive medium redefines all the previous media and renders them identifiable as paradigms