• higher ed,  OU

    The criteria for a Vice Chancellor

    The OU is seeking a new Vice Chancellor, with our acting one Mary Kellett, having done an admirable job in halting the chaos, and beginning the healing process following the disastrous previous regime. The UCU has put together a very good list of criteria they would want to see in a future VC. These are all very reasonable, and I would support all of them, particularly the type of criteria which are important but don’t often get listed in formal job descriptions and headhunting procedures, including: Wholeheartedly support the OU’s mission statement See the university first and foremost as a public institution for learning, research and the development of critical…

  • OU,  OUEdTech,  pedagogy

    Innovating Pedagogy 2019

    As you may know, a group of academics in the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU, produce an annual report looking at innovations in teaching and learning. Led by Rebecca Ferguson and Mike Sharples, we collaborate with a different educational research unit each time, and this year it was the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway. We skipped the 2018 one and nudged it into 2019, so here is the new report. It proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not had a profound influence on education in their current form. These are: Playful Learning Learning with Robots Decolonising…

  • Weblogs

    The 1000th Ed Techie post!

    This is the 1000th post on the Ed Techie blog. It took me over twelve years to get here, so I don’t think I’ll qualify as prolific. Steady, that’s the word. When I started, we still called them weblogs, Queen Victoria sniffed that they would never last, and they were put online by Cockney chimney sweeps, so let us now be all smug that it’s still here. I’ve blogged about blogging many times (it’s a blogger’s favourite subject), but it’s fitting on this auspicious occasion to reflect on what I’ve learnt, or come to believe, about blogging and its role in ed tech. So while we crack open the champagne,…

css.php