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The alchemy of ed tech
Image from Public Domain Review (replace this with an architecture and data flow diagram) I’m reading a few popular history of chemistry books at the moment (notably Mendeleyev’s Dream and Napoleon’s Buttons). One theme is how the history of chemistry was plagued by the completely bogus notion of alchemy. The idea that base metals could be transmuted into gold dominated any dabblings in chemistry for centuries, and kept reappearing in different cultures and at different times. “This has to be possible, right?” was the persistent motivation. The dogged pursuit of alchemy was characterised by the following: Greed – unlimited wealth awaits! Obfuscation – it persists through rumour, and secret formulas,…
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Patterns across an academic career
Will there be cake? This year marks 21 years of me working at the Open University. I hope (as does my mortgage provider) I’ve got another 15 years or so left, but I’m edging “old timer” status now, so I was reflecting the other day about the difficulty of applying management to an academic career, if they’re all as wriggly and messy as mine. Senior managers in higher education have my sympathy. There is increasing pressure to be efficient and cut costs, which means getting the most you can out of employees, combined with demands for transparency and accountability. Academia isn’t the ivory tower that people who post in newspaper…
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Being lost as staff development
In my last post I mentioned that I am studying an MA in Art History. This is not an area I know much about, not one I can even slide into easily. I don’t have much of the vocabulary, the skills of artistic analysis, the basic knowledge of art. So, I feel a bit lost much of the time. But it’s a well structured course, and I’m enjoying it. This sense of being a bit out of my depth reminded me of George Siemens statement that learning is a vulnerable process. I think much of the learning experience is about negotiating that vulnerability. The problem is that by the time…
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I like assessment, Goddammit!
I’m studying an Art History Masters with the OU at the moment, so I’m going to do a couple of quick posts related to that. I’ll talk about it in general terms in the next post, but wanted to focus on one aspect at then moment, which is assessment. Assessment has a bad press these days. If you want to be a hipster in the ed tech world, and get lost of cool keynote invites where you say ‘out of the box’ things, then a pretty good line to take is “we should do away with all assessment”. The general feeling is that as soon as you start to assess…
