Information Technology Reference
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otherness of new ideas. This dialogic verticality is different from the verticality of
the rationalists because it is a movement from identity into difference. At the end of
the journey there are no universal structures of reason, only uncertainty, multiplic-
ity and possibility. What could be more important in the emerging global network
society than learning how to live constructively and creatively in a situation where
there are always multiple voices with no possibility of an overview or a final true
answer to any problem? In this Chapter we unpacked this dialogic theoretical per-
spective to turn it into a foundation for the design of education with technology
and we tentatively put forward a framework for educational design based on the
conceptual implications of the theory and on examples of activities that seemed to
have worked in promoting movement into dialogic space. The concepts of opening,
deepening, widening and resourcing dialogic space were used to analyze different
educational designs. Some guiding principles were provided, such as the value of
teaching content through drawing students into fields of dialogue and the impor-
tance of combining the use of technology with face-to-face pedagogies that actively
teach the skills and social ground rules required for engagement in dialogue across
difference. Although it remains weak on the details this framework offers a new way
of understanding the role of the internet in teaching thinking. As well as the external
relationships of voices situated in dispersed places and times, dialogue, it is claimed,
offers the potential for internal relationships between voices. In mediating multiple
voices in dialogue with each other the internet should be understood on the model
of this internal dialogic space more than on the model of an external structure. The
signs of the internet are perhaps best understood as stand ins or proxies for the “face
of the other” described by Levinas as a kind of sign that signifies not content but a
context for meaning (Levinas, 1978, p. 158, 1989, p. 90). This context for meaning
is dialogue with others and with otherness in general. Whilst the internet is not itself
dialogic space it appears to make possible the partial external realization of what
has always been the internal intuition of dialogue: the ideal of all voices from all
cultures and all times in dialogue together. As well as being an effective response
to the need for workers who can thrive in a global knowledge economy, teaching
thinking with the internet, understood as opening, widening and deepening dialogic
space, is a practical proposal for how education could participate in the creation of
a more peaceful future.
References
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Bakhtin, M. (1986).
Speech genres and other late essays
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Bell, D. (1999).
The coming of post-industrial society
. New York: Basic Books.
Biesta, G. (2006).
Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future
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