Every Era Is a Technological Era

A Framework of Evolutionary Patterns for Understanding the Continuum of Educational Innovation

Abstract

New information technologies emerge constantly and are often discussed as isolated and disconnected events. This disruptive perspective has generated significant tensions in the educational field, with recurring concerns, such as the fear of students merely copying content, persisting since the era of printed encyclopedias. This study aimed to develop a framework of evolutionary patterns in educational technologies that could serve as a guiding thread for more continuous, fluid, and progressive discussions on the topic. The theoretical foundation discusses the timing of decision-making for innovation adoption and key factors that influence the speed of technological assimilation, especially familiarity with predecessor technologies. The research was conducted as a historical-documentary study with autoethnographic elements, using book titles on educational technology published between 1976 and 2025, complemented by 129 academic publications, 40 thesis supervisions, and 60 event participations by the authors related to educational technology themes. Procedures included defining reference technological eras, mapping era characteristics, and experimenting with analytical categorizations. The results identified seven technological eras organized in complementary pairs (Encyclopedia-Audiovisual, Computers-Internet, Social Networks-Mobility, Generative AI), based on the evolution of text-audiovisual languages and production levels (consumption, authorial production, collaborative, and semi-automatic). The developed framework offers educators familiar reference points for each new technological transition, helping them see innovations as part of a relatively predictable evolutionary continuum, reducing anxiety, and facilitating teacher training processes and educational planning.