Learning through technology

With the rise of digital media and their increasingly pervasive use in educational settings, more and more attention is being paid to the ways technology can facilitate language learning. Most discussions about the effects of technology on language learning, however, have focused rather narrowly on ‘new media’ (computers, the internet, and mobile devices), ignoring the fact that technological mediation has been a central component of language learning ever since the invention of the printing press. While understanding the effects of digital technologies on language learning is of primary importance, especially as such technologies are becoming so much part of the fabric of our everyday communicative practices, doing so requires a more general understanding of technological mediation itself (see Norris & Jones, 2005), and the ways it influences both cognitive and social processes