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Abstract

Technology in Education is our second issue for 2020. The issue's editorial team have worked hard, in difficult global conditions, to work with reviewers and authors to bring this issue to publication. Many thanks go to the editor, Michael P. Menchaca, and his two Associate Editors, Daniel Hoffman and De-Graft Johnson Dei. While we have a special issue, COVID-19: Education Responses to a Pandemic, opening for submissions later this year, we need to acknowledge now that technology in education has been at the forefront of many educationalists' minds. We look forward to receiving many different and thought-provoking submissions later in the year. On reflecting on what might be said about technology and its use in education, I was reminded of the following comment: As far as technology itself and education is concerned, technology is basically neutral. It's like a hammer. The hammer doesn't care whether you use it to build a house or whether on torture, using it to crush somebody's skull, the hammer can do either. (Noam Chomsky). Technology, the "knowledge or use of the mechanical arts and applied sciences" (one definition in The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary), has been in education for far longer than many current students would acknowledge. So often the term "technology in education" has come to mean the use of computers and the affordances of the Internet. Probably the first use of technology in education was the realization that you could use a stick to scrawl on the ground instead of using a finger with all the hazards that can entail. Rudimentary technology indeed, but technology nevertheless. Please don't get me wrong: I am a fan of technology. As a university lecturer I ran tutorials in Second Life for my distance education students: but I used it with a purpose, developing a sense of social presence which has been shown to be important for engagement. I didn't make the technology drive the education. Education is and always must be the driving force behind any use of technology.