Can't believe I've made it this far...
Ok, just to start a brief comment on the Bax article...
Bax proposes to reassess the history of CALL from an interpretive (as opposed to merely factual) perspective in order to learn from the past and set an agenda for the future. His goal is full integration of CALL technology into l2 learning which he contends has not happen yet. (We’re still at the stage of fear/awe for technology on our way to full acceptance of innovation) We'll know we've achieved true integration when technology has been 'normalized', i.e., become invisible, just part of learning the way pens and books are and of course do not even require mentioning when we speak of education. The means to this final goal is to produce more in-depth ethnographies and action research to gain a better understanding of the specific dynamics of local learning environments particularly in terms of all the other factors (beyond technology itself) which play a role in normalization of technology.
The idea of “invisibilization” of technology worries me! I don’t quite buy his analogy with pens and books. They seem to be a quite different type of 'cultural artifact'. Wasn't Kramsch (via Thorne) 'just' saying (read it this morning, :) ) that the 'authority' of technology in CMC is in itself already rendered invisible and that this fact doesn't exactly help users’ empowerment and self-determination?! Do we really want it invisible?? How can we integrated it, use it in all its potential, but stay alert at what it does, what people do with it and the extend we stay aware of it?
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