Educational technologists usually appeal to
psychological theories rather than technological
opportunity to motivate the introduction of new
approaches to support learning. In this paper we list
key developments over the past fifty years and
distinguish approaches that have a convincing
theoretical base from those that were really driven by
ease of access to interactive computing facilities. We
then look at the recent impact of new technologies on
individual and group student learning. We take a
strong position that we now have new topologies for
learning which have no direct analogues in past
educational practice. These positive educational
developments are occurring because of relatively
cheap access to almost ubiquitous computing and
because of the maturity of a range of artificial
intelligence derived search and indexing mechanisms
that are now easy to use. We consider the barriers to
effective deployment of these new approaches by
educational institutions, paying particular attention to
the need to devise new approaches to formative and
summative assessment.