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Edtech & Symbols of Permanence
I understand why tech companies like education, but I don’t understand why they like it so much. Obviously, there’s money, the global education market is estimated at $4.4 trillion. Get a big chunk of that market and you can buy a football team. And there’s the perception that it’s slow and ripe for change, which appeals to both investors and egos of developers. These are both undoubtedly significant factors. But I’ve come to suspect there’s something else in the psychological mix – a form of legitimacy and permanence. I’m going to try to explain this by way of a long winded detour into the history of my local castle. But…
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Diving for pearls
For the upcoming REF, the OER Hub are one of the possible impact case studies for the OU. We applied for a small bit of internal funding, and last week all decamped to a cottage in Gloucestershire for five days to put in an intensive writing session. This is not a commentary on the REF, an analysis of the neoliberalisation of education or the dangers of metrics, just some reflections on that writing process (so lower your expectations). Firstly, a dedicated (isolated) week is definitely the way to go. We had been provided with a set of documents to complete by our excellent REF advisor, Jane Seale. But without a…
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Alone in Blogistan
One of the books I read last year was a happy confluence of factors. The book was Hans Fallada’s war time tale of quiet German resistance, Alone in Berlin (aka Every Man Dies Alone). It related to the political situation and rise of the right (the frothing demand of British newspapers to crush opposition to Brexit was straight from this era), a trip my daughter and I took to Berlin, and my academic interest in online communication. And it is this last element that I’ve been pondering on and off since reading it last October. For those who don’t know the story, it follows the tale of a nondescript Berlin…
