Abstract:
An increasing use of digital technologies in education systems worldwide is evident. With the emergence of digital technologies, the nature and the form of school collaboration has been benefited features from digital technologies to connect two schools from different geographical areas. This paper aims to a rich contextual analysis of digital technology uses from BRIDGE project, a major school collaboration initiative between Australia and Indonesian schools. Using a critical discourse analysis (CDA), the paper highlights the way in which issues of digital technologies and education are constructed in the project’s documents, social media, and newspaper coverage. The portrayals of digital technologies and education from the CDA will then be interrogated with the case studies from three Indonesian schools participated in the BRIDGE project. Based on these two data collection methods, this paper offers a critical overview of formations of digital technologies in the global levels and enactments in the local Indonesian classroom levels. Within the global level, CDA analysis reveals that digital technologies tend to be assumed as ‘enablers’ of school collaboration activities between Australian and Indonesia schools. The push for the use of digital technologies can be argued to be influenced by technology determinist’ way of thinking which perceives the ability of digital technologies to transform school collaboration. However, positive portrayals of digital technologies in the global level were not followed by the extensive uses of digital technologies within school collaboration activities. The lack of digital technology uses tends to be influenced by the social aspects within which digital technologies are used. Therefore, this necessitates an effort to take context into account when considering the use of digital technologies in educational activities, including school school collaboration.