3. (Or – Why knowing
some history of ed
tech is a good idea
in the pandemic)
4. Book
• CC licensed
• Free digital
• Available:
http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/
books/120290
• Visuals - Bryan Mathers
5. Me
• IET at the OU
• @mweller
• Blog.edtechie.net
• OER Hub
• Digital scholar
• Battle for Open
• Open programme director
6. Outline
• Approach & motivation
• Three phases and some tech
• Some themes
• What it means in pandemic
• Discussion
7. Approach
• ALT’s 25th year
• Choose a tech every year from
1994
• Based on my experience
• When they became significant
(not invented)
• http://blog.edtechie.net/category/
25yearsedtech/
8. Limitations
• You will hate me because
• I didn’t mention your favourite tech
• I did mention your specialist area and
misrepresented it
• I put things in the wrong year
• I missed something vitally significant
• Not good for longer/abstract themes
• Tech focused
• Some omissions
• But not (just) a nostalgia trip
9. Why write this book?
• To provide a basis for shared
understanding and common knowledge
• To demonstrate a history of innovation in
higher education.
• To draw out themes and lessons
• To highlight the necessity of a critical
approach
• To provide an alternative historical
narrative to the year zero, disruption
based one
11. 2005 Video
2006 Web 2.0
2007 Second Life and Virtual Worlds
2008 E-Portfolios
2009 Twitter and Social Media
2010 Connectivism
2011 Personal Learning Environments
2012 Massive Open Online Courses
2013 Open Textbooks
2014 Learning Analytics
2015 Digital Badges
2016 The Return of Artificial Intelligence
2017 Blockchain
2018 Ed Tech’s Dystopian Turn
1994 Bulletin Board Systems
1995 The Web
1996 Computer-Mediated
Communication
1997 Constructivism
1998 Wikis
1999 E-Learning
2000 Learning Objects
2001 E-Learning Standards
2002 The Learning Management
System
2003 Blogs
2004 - Open Educational Resources
14. Lessons from the web
• Good enough always wins out in popularity if you can make it
universal
• The web gave education the freedom to publish, communicate
and share
• For distance education which had previously relied on
expensive broadcast or shipping physical copies of books,
video and CDs, this was a game changer.
• It made other unis like the OU and the OU like other unis
• The democratisation of the web is what we’re still dealing with
today
16. It was everywhere!
• Could be an excuse for poor design
• Didn’t work well for a lot of disciplines
• Significant because it showed educators engaging with
technology in a meaningful, conceptual manner
• Not just about the tech
• Maybe lost some of this experimental approach?
18. This would be radical now
• Information source.
• Student assignment hand-in and review. Students post their assignments when they were ready for grading
so students had an opportunity to see one another’s work and even comment upon it
• Collaborative Writing. Students were asked to do collaborative writing projects selecting from a range of
topics.
• Anchored Discussion. An anchored discussion is one based around an initial topic or document.
• Project case library. Students were given a space to post their assignments after grading,
• Cross-Class Projects. Across different years
• Hot List list of pages which were particularly useful or on which there were active discussions.
• Choose-Your-Path Adventure Game. students created an adventure game about one of their assignments,
• Student Information Pages.
21. VLEs as prime ed tech
• The VLE is dead (Weller 2007) – errm
• Allowed rapid development quickly
• Good enough
• Sedimentation process
• Balance to be struck between allowing freedom, innovation, and
experimentation while maintaining the core functions
23. Web 2.0 legacy
• Challenged how education conducts many of its cherished
processes
• Filter on the way out, not the way in
• Participatory culture
• Student generated content
• Shift from institutional systems
• Open approaches
25. Twitter issues for education
• Context collapse
• Risk/reward of encouraging students/staff online
• Duty of care
• Data capitalism/Privacy
• Reclaiming the space from trolls
• Understanding its role
• Being part of society
28. The MOOC questions
• Is there a sustainable business model?
• Who are they good for?
• Was the hype good for edtech/open ed?
• What can we learn from them as ed tech case study?
• When is a MOOC just online learning?
• Why did they get attention when OER didn’t?
30. LA as example of unintended
consequences
• Scenario – have predictive analytics that are 90% accurate
• Good intention: Can help set up support for students who need
it
• Bad consequence: in post Covid HE finances are restricted,
used to exclude students who may not succeed
• Data will likely have class, race, previous experience as factor
• Should they still release it?
32. Critical voices are needed
• Invasive uses of technologies (Gilliard)
• Nefarious social & political uses of ed tech (Watters)
• “digital polarization” and algorithmic misinformation (Caulfield)
• Responsibility or duty of care
• Appropriate skepticism
• Develop skills (eg SIFT)
• Engage in research and evaluation or practice that counters the dark
side of tech
34. Some themes
• the tech part of ed tech “walks taller.”
• Innocence & ‘neutrality’ is no longer valid stance
• Recurring ideas & Cycles of interest
• The role of humans
• Innovation happens
• Replace or help educators
35. In time of pandemic
• Ed tech is now very relevant
• Lots of ppl will be selling it as a
solution
• Understanding what has been done
before
• What has worked
• What hasn’t
• Why
36. Example
• Blockchain for assessment!
• What does it do?
• Why not eportfolio?
• How does it overcome the problems
faced before?
37. Example
• Reusable content
• What were the problems with LOs?
• How can we overcome them this time?
• How best to use OER?
38. Example
• VLE
• You already have it
• How to move beyond it
• The tech isn’t the main thing
39. Conclusions
• There is a long history of ed tech innovation in education
• It doesn’t need saving
• Understanding this is essential to making good decisions now
25 years in an hour is a lot and I’ve not given this talk before so we’ll so how far we get before people start pleading for it to stop.
I’ve put a break in at half way so we can assess
Eg accessibility
Identity
Over halfway?
Have we got time?
Any questions?
Eg accessibility
Identity
this is the year I joined the Open University. At the interview I said “so have you thought about using the web to deliver courses?”
People regularly made proclamations that no-one would shop online, or that it was the equivalent of CB radio.
web browser provided was a common tool so that specific software wasn’t required for every function.
Learning HTML was always going to be a barrier and web publishing tools such as FrontPage
the magic of running OU summer schools where we taught people HTML, and got them to publish a page online. The realisation that anyone in the world could now see their page was a revelation
web based learning was getting a lot of traction, and with it people began to look around for new models of teaching
Piaget, Vygostky and Bruner
learners construct their own knowledge, based on their experience and relationship with concepts
the web gave agency to learners.
They could create, collaborate, discover for themselves, freed from the conventions of time and distance. When people can learn anywhere and anytime then the pedagogy designed for a lecture hall seemed limiting.
Ward Cunningham is credited with inventing them (and the term) in 1994
I heard of them in 97 at an ed tech conference. I came back from that all enthused, “let’s make all our courses wikis!”
they embody the spirit of optimism and philosophy of the open web
Eg accessibility
Identity
The VLE provided an enterprise solution for elearning for providers.
Brought together cottage industry
VLE offered a neat collection of the most popular tools, any one of which might not be as good as the best of breed specific tool, but good enough
allowed for a single, enterprise solution with associated training, technical support and helpdesk to be implemented.
elearning could be progressed more quickly across an entire institution.
Sediment
O’Reilly set out the seven principles of web 2.0
user-generated content services, including YouTube, Flickr, and blogs
the addition of “2.0” to any educational term in the late 2000s made it fashionable
Bust – you did need a business model after all
Founded in 2006, Twitter had moved well beyond the tech-enthusiast bubble by 2009
Not going to say much on it
Eg accessibility
Identity
It had to be!
Like Twitter, I’m not going to say much on these
can be viewed as the combination of several preceding technologies: some of the open approach of OER, the application of video, the experimentation of connectivism, and the revolutionary hype of web 2.0.
Doug’s model!
As more data is available so we look to do more with it
For distance ed there are big possibilities – shorten the feedback cycle
he impact of social media on politics, Russian bots, (actual) fake news, Cambridge Analytica, and numerous privacy scares, the need for a critical approach is apparent.
Being sceptical about tech is no longer a specialist interest.
uspicion about the claims of educational technology in general, and the role of software companies in particular
Much o
f the narrative around ed tech is associated with change, which quickly becomes co-opted into broader agendas around commercialisation, commodification and massification of education.
shift from advocacy, which tended to promote the use of new technologies, to a more critical perspective
he impact of social media on politics, Russian bots, (actual) fake news, Cambridge Analytica, and numerous privacy scares, the need for a critical approach is apparent.
Being sceptical about tech is no longer a specialist interest.
uspicion about the claims of educational technology in general, and the role of software companies in particular
Much o
f the narrative around ed tech is associated with change, which quickly becomes co-opted into broader agendas around commercialisation, commodification and massification of education.
shift from advocacy, which tended to promote the use of new technologies, to a more critical perspective