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Metaphors podcast round-up
As with the previous version of this post, this is just a prompt to round-up recent episodes of the Metaphors of Ed Tech podcast. I haven’t been announcing each podcast episode release, apart from the ones with guests. You can find all the episodes and links to your preferred podcast platform here. In chronological order here are the episodes and some thoughts on them: Jaws and Mudlarks – unsurprisingly the Jaws metaphor from the Metaphors book is one of my favourites. I use the Spielberg film to explore some of the reactions to the pandemic. Those beaches will be open for this weekend. I also talk about the digital mudlarks analogy for educational…
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10 PhD Viva tips from an examiner
I did a mock viva for someone recently, and I shared lots of my views on a successful viva based ion examining around 50 PhDs over the years, so I thought I’d share them here. This relates to the UK viva system, which is usually an open-ended defence, with two examiners discussing the thesis with the candidate. Things vary quite differently elsewhere. These are obviously just my views, and I’m generally a ‘nice’ examiner, I want people to enjoy the experience and to pass. Most examiners I’ve met are the same, but one does hear the occasional horror story. So here’s my top ten tips: Just my experience of course,…
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Generative AI & the taste of sweet surrender
I’ve attended a lot of AI talks recently (I mean, even if I tried to avoid them I would still have racked up a few). And here’s my hot take for education – just go for it. I don’t say this as an AI enthusiast, I find it quite boring and kind of soul sucking, but shouting loudly and hoping it will go away isn’t a viable strategy. As I argued in my last post, it has a strong inevitability factor, and lack of engagement risks doing ourselves and our students a disservice. That’s not to say we shouldn’t fight to make it open, to avoid bias in datasets, and…
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The inevitability, or otherwise, of ed tech
In Metaphors, I have a chapter about VAR (Video Assisted Refereeing) and Learning Analytics. In it I make the case that VAR got to the point where its implementation in football seemed inevitable. Everyone (fans, pundits, players, not sure about referees) wanted it – mistakes were made by refs, and then analysed in detail in the studio by pundits with access to multiple high definition camera angles. It seemed ludicrous that the ref, who was actually making the decisions, shouldn’t have the same access. I go into some of the problems with the actual implementation in the chapter, but I want to revisit that idea of ‘inevitability’ in this post.…
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Smart motorways and lessons for tech adoption
In the UK at least, the implementation of smart motorways has been a curious story to follow, and I think in its roll-out and reaction there is much that can be learnt for technology adoption across higher ed. First up, what are “smart” motorways anyway? They are “a section of a motorway that uses traffic management methods to increase capacity and reduce congestion in particularly busy areas.” There are three types of them: A lot of money (and traffic queuing due to disruption) has been spent on implementing smart motorways, but the rollout of the last category of ALR smart motorways was paused following safety concerns. The Daily Mail and…
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The Cursed Earth post – the AI version
In my last post I messed around with the idea of Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth story as a metaphor for aspects of educational technology. I thought I’d try this idea as a ChatGPT prompt. It strikes me as a good example of the type of thing generative text isn’t very good at, because it’s quirky and relies on some depth of understanding. At OER23 Dave Cormier called this kind of AI “the autotune of knowledge“, and this seemed like a good example to test that notion. What it generated is below. Thanks, I hate it. I mean, it’s very impressive from such an idiosyncratic prompt, but it’s so bland it…
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The Cursed Earth of Ed Tech
I’ve decided to get back to using this blog for doing things that I think are fun. This isn’t the same as them actually being fun, so I accept it may get rather self-indulgent at times. But that’s the joy of blogs, right? In that spirit, I was inspired by a book I read recently, called I Am The Law, by Michael Molcher. The author takes stories from the 2000AD character Judge Dredd to explore the changing political use of ‘law and order’ and increasing politicisation of policing. It’s very well written and researched, and the use of the Dredd perspective is a useful lens even if you’re not a…
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Spider cats and super peeps
I was at the OER23 conference in Inverness last week, hosted by UHI, so here are some snippets of thought. First up, we hosted a GO-GN one day workshop with 16 attendees. It was great to get back to a fuller session after trialling a smaller one as we emerged from lockdown last year. We used this event toi launch the super-duper mega edition Research Handbook. This combines the Research Methodology guide, the Conceptual Frameworks guide and the Research Reviews, plus other useful openly licensed resources. It is intended as a growing resource so we will add more to it. If you’re doing any research, but particularly related to open…
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Open as in pathway
Open education is a term that has many interpretations. We mapped eight areas in this work, based on citation analysis. A lot of our focus tends to be on the individual module, for example, open pedagogy, open textbooks, OER, MOOCs, all operate at the level of the individual course. Other aspects, such as the Open University’s open entry to degrees, and open access policies operate at the institutional level. We have macro and micro levels of openness, but perhaps an absence of meso- level ones. I’ve blogged about this before, but one aspect that I think is overlooked is openness at the curriculum level. On the open degree, we allow…
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Metaphors podcast round-up
Because I figure I spam my socials enough with blog posts, I haven’t been announcing each podcast episode release. I’m opting for the mid-spam option then of rounding up some recent episodes in one post, as a reminder that it exists mainly. You can find all the episodes and links to your preferred podcast platform here. In chronological order here are the episodes and some thoughts on them: Why metaphors and ed tech – the intro to the book really, setting out why metaphors are of interest themselves, and why I think they’re useful as a means of framing educational technology. This was before I pilfered the good mic from…
