Here s one perspective. Few other fields have such difficulty in self-definition everyone knows what psychology, computer science, or biology is. At the foundation of educational technology is instructional design, the process of planning instruction.
Instructional design is a process technology completely independent of any hardware or software.
Computers, audiovisual equipment, and other delivery media are hardware technologies. Herein lies one source of confusion about educational technology. The word technology has a double meaning. We have the process technology of instructional design and a collection of hardware technologies for delivery and management of instruction. A good balance and separation between the process of design and the hardware of delivery is needed for things to work.