edtech
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July round-up
My “doing it for the newsletter” monthly round-up of activity and random bits for July. It’s been a bit of a disjointed month, because after returning from the Eden conference in Dublin at the end of June, both Maren and I came down with covid (no-one else from the conference seems to have been inflicted so probably an airport/plane thing). It was as rough as the first time around, a reminder that it’s still there and still carries a punch. I made sure to take time off work this time around though – last time I soldiered on attending Teams meetings and I think that meant it lingered around longer…
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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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Give me an M! Give me an A!
via GIPHY One of the things I have enjoyed working on the most during my 375 year career at the OU, is the Masters in Online and Distance Education (MAODE). I’ve blogged previously about how I was saddened when this was closed down at the OU. Since then we have continued to produce curriculum in IET, most notably very successful microcredentials, under the leadership of my colleague Leigh Anne Perryman. We have also been working on developing a new Masters in Online Teaching (MAOT). This will comprise of the existing course H880 Technology Enhanced Futures, then 60 points chosen from the array of microcredentials (or a module from the appropriate…
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Oh no, it’s another metaverse hot take
via GIPHY Following on from my late to the party Twitter hot take, here is my even later to the party one on the metaverse (next week – learning objects). I think for many of us who have been in and around educational technology for a while, the idea of a shared 3D virtual world brings back memories of SecondLife and even earlier excitement about MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented). And while it easy to dismiss another attempt at the virtual world as universal education platform, it’s probably worth revisiting why SecondLife failed and evaluating if those reasons hold true for the Metaverse. Firstly, we are seeing very similar over-hyping of…
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Oh no, it’s another Twitter thought piece
via GIPHY I didn’t want to write this, you don’t want to read it, but here we are… I used to play a football manager game in the 90s (gaming was all downhill after Championship Manager 98), and once I learned the best players to sign, and how to keep rebooting until I won a game, I could get to the stage where Southend were winning the Champions League. There’s nowhere else to go after this triumph, and so my designs turned dark. As a Spurs fan I took a childish pleasure in taking over Arsenal and doing all I could to ruin them before getting the sack. I would…
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Reviewing the ed tech angst
via GIPHY Audrey Watters’ understandable withdrawal from the ed tech sphere has prompted some musings, and I like a good navel gaze, so I thought I’d join in. Audrey sums it up rather bleakly: I have to put this decade-long project to rest so that I can move on to something that doesn’t consume me in its awfulness and make me dwell in doom Jim Groom bemoans the selling out by many in the field, stating: There are a lot of edtechs, in the true sense of that word for me, that have willingly resisted the lure of exchanging cachet for cash. Folks who continue to good work, edtechs that I deeply respect…
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Why “Uber for education” metaphors are flawed (and just rubbish)
I blogged last week about the ‘Netflix for learning” metaphors doing the rounds currently. These are just the latest incarnation in the long running analogy [Insert current tech business] for education/learning. It’s so predictable that I created a random generator for it. What follows is an extract from the upcoming Metaphors of Ed Tech book, which sets out why this type of metaphor is both not very useful, and also potentially harmful in developing effective ed tech. _____________________________________________________________ There is a very strange tendency in technology writing to take any successful business and view it as a universal acid that burns through everything. It seems the most accessible metaphor for…
