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The VLE is to teaching as Powerpoint is to presentation
The title says it all really, but just to unpack it a bit more. As Sarah Horrigan commented recently, people find VLEs very dull. This is partly because they are made to use – if you banned VLEs it’d be a sure way to make them interesting. But I think what the VLE and Powerpoint have in common is that they are in the first wave of digital democratization tools. Such tools can’t be too far removed from traditional practice, otherwise people simple won’t use them. So they provide a useful stepping stone onto a more digitally enhanced future (where it’s always sunny and everyone loves each other). The danger…
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A pedagogy of abundance
It has been said that previous economic models were based on scarcity. In a physical world one has to deal with the basic principle that once you give something away you no longer have it. Resources are finite. Making them, sharing them, moving them, storing them – it all eats up resource. But in a digital world these considerations disappear, or drop to near zero (there is still a cost in storing say, but nowhere near as much as a physical item if we compared a digital book with a real one for example). We thus need a new form of economics that accommodates this – an economy of abundance.…
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Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change
Last year I wrote a piece for a special edition of On the Horizon, which Michael Feldstein was editing. It has (finally) appeared in print. Michael gained permission for authors to publish their work online also (the journal isn't open – boooo!) so here is the PDF of mine, and below the article itself. I haven't revisited it since I wrote it, and may disagree with what I said now, but I am trying to ensure I put all my publications online as they come out. [Published in On the Horizon 17(3) pp. 181-189]________________________________________________ Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change. Martin Weller Abstract: Purpose: The central theme…
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Celebrity, blogging and the role of the academic
A couple of articles recently have provoked some thought on academics, blogging and the relationship of these to journalism. The first was an article in the Times Higher, “I’m a celebrity academic … in the blogosphere“, which suggested UK academics should attempt to become ‘celebrity academics’ via blogs: “There has always been a culture of the celebrity academic in North America,” …A particular academic can make a big difference. They are encouraged to get their name out there, and in many cases shamelessly self-promote. The blog provides an excellent vehicle to do that.” This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the celebrity argument, but I think it misunderstands the aim,…
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Is the revolution justified?
Please see my previous post on the process behind this post. I have created a PDF version and below the blog post version, so you have the format of your choice. [This is a draft version, the full version will be published in JIME. September 2009] Is the revolution justified? Introduction It is common for observers and bloggers (including myself) in educational technology to proclaim that current educational practice is, in some way, ‘broken’. It is seen as not delivering deep learning, or failing to meet the needs of students, and of potentially becoming irrelevant to a new generation of digital learners. For example, here I am arguing that the…
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Exploring the publishing process
At the beginning of the year I wrote a paper provisionally titled 'Is the revolution justified?'. My aim in the paper was to question the base assumption many of us have (myself included) that a technologically driven revolution is coming to higher education. It's an interesting journey and my conclusion was 'not really', but more importantly, framing the adoption of technology as an imperative to save us from the oncoming doom is the wrong way to view it. Rather we should look upon digital technology as an unprecedented opportunity. Anyway, I submitted the artile to JIME, because it was relevant, and is open. We batted it around a while, and…
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Reflections on openness
As part of the EVOLVE/Educamp series I gave a talk online last Monday about openness in education. You can access the recording of the Elluminate session here, and below are my slides: Reflection in openness View more presentations from mweller. Some of the slides may be familiar to you. I set out how the Open University had been founded around the mission of being open to people, places, methods and ideas. I emphasised that the founders had shown great foresight, or got lucky, with the choice of name. Imagine how dated The University of the Airwaves (or some similar name) would sound now. But 'open' is a term that has…
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Living in a twitter world
(The last in my trilogy of ALT-C related posts) Two things brought home to me that we live in a twitter world (whether David Cameron or John Humphrys like it or not, and indeed, all the better that they don't). The first was that I attended the ALT-C for the first time post the development of twitter. I have been to this conference (it's the UK's main ed tech conference) three times before. Usually my approach was to hang around on my own in a corner, maybe find a couple of OU people and stick with them, or stand on the edge of a group and hope someone notices me.…
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The “Technology isn’t important” argument
<No Technology in Brighton by Sammy0716 http://www.flickr.com/photos/28438258@N08/3005591006/> Ten years ago I chaired the OU's first major online course (I may have mentioned this before 🙂 and we had an onslaught of students who wanted to take it, precisely because it was online. I gave a talk about how we (John Naughton, Gary Alexander and myself) had shaped the course around the web. Our idea had been to fundamentally make technology the focus, and envisage a course that had the internet at the centre of it. At that talk one of the objections was 'technology is irrelevant, it's pedagogy that matters.' I gave a woolly, conciliatory response then. I have been…
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The long-awaited ‘education as fruit’ metaphor
I have just returned from the ALT-C conference in Manchester, where I held a workshop with Brian Kelly called 'Realising Dreams, Avoiding Nightmares, Accepting Responsibilities'. My role was to present the future, and then for us to discuss what the obstacles were to realising it, and the related issues for educators, learners and IT services. Here is my presentation: Dreams of future learning View more presentations from mweller. In my talk I decided to use an extended (tortuous some might say) fruit based metaphor. It begins to get rather pained towards the end, but stick with it, I think it comes to fruition (ahem). It goes something like this: Current…
