25 + 25
February is quite the month for 25 Year related events in the Weller household. For a start I celebrate 25 Years at the Open University. I joined in February 1995 on a 3 year lecturer contract, contributing to a course on Artificial Intelligence. At the time I had romantic visions of being a wanderer, an academic factotum, drifting from job to job as if precarity was cool. “I’ll only stay for 2 years, max” I confidently predicted. (Narrator: he stayed longer).
It is also the month when my book 25 Years of Ed Tech comes out, this Friday in fact. My copies turned up today. That Bryan Mathers artwork really ties the room together.

Anyway, this post is really to give you fair warning – there is going to be a lot of related content to these two events coming up, so you may want to judicially use that mute option on various channels.
Because I just KNOW you’ll be hosting your own 25 Years of Ed Tech launch party on Friday, I have created a playlist. It takes a track from each year, which maybe, if you look at it in a certain light, has a connection to the ed tech choice of that year. Enjoy the soundtrack to the book and the list of technologies is below:
1994 Bulletin Board Systems
1995 The Web
1996 Computer-Mediated Communication
1997 Constructivism
1998 Wikis
1999 E-Learning
2000 Learning Objects
2001 E-Learning Standards
2002 The Learning Management System
2003 Blogs
2004 Open Educational Resources
2005 Video
2006 Web 2.0
2007 Second Life and Virtual Worlds
2008 E-Portfolios
2009 Twitter and Social Media
2010 Connectivism
2011 Personal Learning Environments
2012 Massive Open Online Courses
2013 Open Textbooks
2014 Learning Analytics
2015 Digital Badges
2016 The Return of Artificial Intelligence
2017 Blockchain
2018 Ed Tech’s Dystopian Turn
9 Comments
Terry Greene
I made another playlist to represent what the vendors were up to throughout the years. It’s just this song 25 times https://open.spotify.com/track/1xIxMz1sNQ4b6svH1GuTtF
mweller
that should’ve been my mooc choice
Simon White
I arrived here because of TM111 Block 3 Week 5 Activity 5.4.
Good find I say (and loads to catch up on 😮
mweller
Hi Simon! Enjoy the randomness 🙂
Simon White
I’ll do my best 😀
Andrew Gray
I’m also studying TM111. I think it’s great that this module is providing this blog with well-deserved publicity!
Clint Lalonde
There is much to love about this post, including kicking off the playlist with Sabotage right through to the excellent usage of the word factotum. Congratulations on both 25 years at the OU and the book release, Martin.
mweller
I figure come for the music, stay for the mediocre takes on ed tech
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