Books
-
Why use metaphors in ed tech
via GIPHY I’m just about to complete a new book, Metaphors of Ed Tech. It’s sort of an accompaniment to 25 Years of Ed Tech (although entirely stand-alone) – it’s been argued that stories and metaphors are the two main modes that humans use to make sense of the world. So 25 Years was the story mode, and this is the metaphor mode. In the intro I set out why I think metaphors are an important way to think about ed tech. The online pivot has highlighted for me the paucity of models we have around online education. It has been framed as a deficit model of the lecture and…
-
Books, charts, lists, 2020
Now in it’s 7th year, my annual book post with bonus pointless charts and lists. One might expect that given that EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD WAS CLOSED, I would have read more books this year than last year. But I managed 59 this year against 2019’s high water of 93. Partly this was the impact of not commuting – a 6 hour round trip to Milton Keynes weekly certainly chunks through a number of audiobooks. But also habits changed and I didn’t devote as much time to books as previously. But more than one a week is acceptable. In terms of genre, I pretty much completed my transition to being…
-
25 Years of OU: 2014 – Battle for Open
As an academic, part of the expectation is to publish journal articles and book chapters particularly with the REF in mind. I’ve always managed a reasonable level of output without being one of the people with an h-index of 60. But I would say my preferred output methods are at opposite ends of the effort continuum – blogs and books. I had written three books previously. When I published my first, Delivering Learning on the Net, I sat back and awaited the new lifestyle of riches, yachts and fame that would ensue. I am still waiting. It was with 2011’s The Digital Scholar though that I began to feel like…
-
25 Years of Ed Tech site
Ok, I know I’m going on about it, last post on the book, I promise (well, maybe not actually last one). I created a small site to accompany it: http://edtechie.net/25Years/ It gathers together the various bits, like images, playlist etc. Plus there is a fun timeline for you to explore. I may add bits to it as I go along. Any suggestions for fun things (I started doing a wiki, but ran out of time/will), plus if anyone else does anything I can add it there too.
-
25 Years artwork
Because I’m quite sad, and have also learnt all I know about merching from Jim Groom, I created a t-shirt and a poster for the 25 Years of Ed Tech book. However, these services are not always available internationally, so here is some of the fab Bryan Mathers artwork for you to use in whatever way you see fit:
-
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…
-
25 Years of Ed Tech book – get those pre-orders in!
Next month my book 25 Years of Ed Tech is published by the lovely people at Athabasca University Press. It will be available under a Creative Commons license, with the digital copy free. But, look at that lovely Bryan Mathers cover – wouldn’t you want a physical copy of that in your hands? If so you can pre-order via Athabasca site or via Combined Academic in the UK. I expect there will be a flurry of self-promotion over the next couple of months. Bear with me. I will reveal the highlight of the book now, which is its dedication, which screams “I have no friends”: To my two canine writing…
-
Self plagiarism and self protection
I was away last week in a cottage in West Wales, trying to get some momentum on a book I am writing. The book is something around Metaphors of Ed Tech. It will be no surprise to anyone I’m sure that it will involve working up a lot of existing blog posts. Some of my friends (looks at Jim Groom and Dave Cormier) like to rib me about rehashing blog posts to make books, but there’s a lot to be said for it. So here is my “protest too much” justification. Jesse Stommel had a good thread on “self-plagiarism”: Self-plagiarism is a misnomer. It isn’t actually plagiarism. Why wouldn’t a…
-
Annual book post with added pointless lists
In 2018, 2017, 2016 & 2015 I did this with pointless graphs, but this year I am adding a new twist to the visual aids and going for the pub bore’s favourite weapon of mass irritation – the list. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am now almost entirely converted to audiobooks (blame Josie Fraser, she got me started). Don’t judge me, instead revel in just how many of those beasts I got through – currently 93 and I will add one or two more over the holiday period, although I expect I’ll fall short of reaching 100, like a massive loser. Here they are broken down by…
-
40 years of ed tech at the OU
My colleagues in IET at the Open University have published an open access book with the lovely Ubiquity Press people. It is free to download in various formats here (or you can buy the hard copy, order it for your library etc). It celebrates the work of the CALRG research group. I like a bit of ed tech history on this blog, which I think is interesting in its own right. But what I particularly like about this book is that they use this history to then consider future developments. So there are four themes, and each has two chapters: Foundations and Futures. As Ann Jones, Eileen Scanlon and Rebecca…
