This position paper uses an ecological approach to examine how the interface between digital technology and education might be taken up as a complex system with interconnected facets that hold a range of implications. We understand the concept of ecology as the science of relations between living and non-living organisms and the environment, and we apply this model to identify the interactions between entities that exist in the hybrid space that intersects human social systems and technical systems. We use themes such as knowledge ecology and law of entropy to analyse how ecology is being discussed in extant literature and as a conceptual guide for thinking about how to develop an ecological framework for critical analysis of digital education. These two examples of are taken from conceptions of “complexity” and are key when illustrating contemporary developments in digital education. We propose ten categories derived from three groups of abstraction as a tool for research on educational, technical, and social impacts of 5G technology—or the relationship between 5G and education as a complex system.

本立场文件采用生态学方法来研究如何将数字技术与教育之间的接口作为具有相互联系的方面的复杂系统来处理，这些方面具有多种含义。我们将生态学概念理解为生命和非生命有机体与环境之间关系的科学，并且我们应用此模型来确定存在于与人类社会系统和技术系统相交的混合空间中的实体之间的相互作用。我们使用知识生态学和熵定律等主题分析现有文献中如何讨论生态学，并作为思考如何为数字教育的批判分析开发生态学框架的概念指南。这两个例子取材于“复杂性”的概念，是说明当代数字教育发展的关键。我们提议从三类抽象中得出十个类别，作为研究5G技术的教育，技术和社会影响（或5G与作为复杂系统的教育之间的关系）的工具。