digital implications
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Wanted – Frontier psychiatrists
Back when the internet (or at least the web) was still relatively new, it caused a lot of reaction. People dismissed it (it’s the new CB fad), pointed out it’s limitations (it’s so slow), or decried it as the portent of doom (the end of universities). Treading between these predictions and prophecies was a tricky business. It seems obvious now that it would go on to impact almost every aspect of society, but that really wasn’t the case back in the late 90s. Any, none, or a mixture of the futures so confidently outlined by detractors and evangelists seemed possible on any given day. This is fairly normal for any…
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Energy crisis and hybrid learning
First of all, the implications of the energy crisis for hybrid learning are waaaaaaay down the list of priorities. Many people in the UK are going to face incredible hardship this winter essentially choosing between food and heating ( this will happen elsewhere too, but the UK has uniquely managed to combine a set of factors such as Brexit, contemptuous leadership, lack of investment in renewables, a failed market approach, over-reliance on imported gas, etc to make this a real catastrophe). We have also seen many small businesses such as cafes and pubs facing incredible energy bill increases that mean they will have to close or start selling a cup…
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The fake online vs in-person culture war
via GIPHY If there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the past few years, it’s that the media and politicians love a fake culture war. There are several reasons for this: distraction (“Hey, why were you partying when we were all observing lockdown?” “Don’t worry about that, what about trans women using ladies loos eh?”); diverting blame (“Why is the NHS so underfunded?” “It’s all those greedy doctors”); making people feel superior sells (“Young people can’t afford houses” “Young people don’t work hard and save like you did”). No group is safe from a culture war it seems: migrants, women, POC, young people, LGBT people, poor people, liberals, etc. So, it’s…
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Models of online & flexible learning
I mentioned in a previous post that I have been doing some work with Dominic Orr and Rob Farrow in behalf of the ICDE, looking at various models of open, online and flexible technology enhanced learning (what we labelled OOFAT). The full report is out now, and I humbly suggest it is the best (OOFAT) report you will ever read. When ICDE set out this work they were very clear about two principles: it should address the range of how open, online and flexible models are being used, and every institution should be able to recognise themselves in the model. So, in contrast to many types of ed tech analysis…
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Emotions, artefacts and education
I’ve been having bits of this conversation with various people, so I’m going to try blogging it as a way of clarifying the mess in my head (a little). During the recent OU Crisis™ one of the elements that kept arising on twitter discussions was students and staff saying the shift to online was flawed, and there was a strong preference for books. Similarly, in nearly all of our student surveys the components of a course that score the highest satisfaction are printed units. As one of the early proponents of online education at the OU, I used to resist this narrative, dismissing it as people sticking with what they…
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The zone of proximal depravity
In the digital era it’s always a difficulty to discern the difference between behaviours that have always been present, but we just notice them differently, and those that are fundamentally changed by the digital environment. Often it’s a bit of both. One such aspect I’ve been thinking about recently is our exposure as individuals to extreme views. It’s one where I think the digital world has caused a significant shift for all of us. In the analogue world, it’s been usually pretty easy not to find yourself exposed to extreme views, or targeted by extremists, or caught in the middle of a conversation with fascists, terrorists, conspiracy theorists, and assorted…
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Oh, so that’s what that meant
Because the internet, and particularly the web and social media, are so pervasive now we have a tendency to overlook how recent it all is, and how rapid the change and associated social adjustments have been. If the founding of the pre-web can be seen as the gestation of the internet’s role in society, then since the 90s we’ve been going through its childhood. This was a time filled with optimism, charm, naïveté, and rapid development. We’re now in the teenage years – it can be dark, moody, but also positive, engaging and realistic. It is a stage where it seeks meaning and its role in the world (and by…
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The Golden/Dark Age of what?
One of the rewarding things about being in ed tech is that because it’s very fast moving you get to act all wise with very little experience. I mean, I started in this in 1995, I’ve been through interactive CD-ROM, electronic tutor groups, intelligent tutoring systems, elearning, VLEs, virtual worlds, elearning standards and metadata, learning objects, personalised learning, OER, blogging, web 2.0, PLEs, MOOCs, intelligent tutoring systems (again), open textbooks, personalised learning (again), learning analytics, and a whole bunch more. To do the same in another discipline I’d have to be approximately 250 years old. When I reflect on this I’m struck by two sides of the same notion: we…
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Annotation & the net conundrum
Annotation tools such as hypothes.is have gathered a lot of interest over the past year, and certainly have a lot of potential in education. It was at Open Ed last year that Jon Becker brought some of the ethical issues to my attention. These tools allow others to overlay annotation and commentary on any site, visible to anyone with that browser extension. It’s not on that site as such, so they don’t need permission to do that. This is great for annotating, say, an article in a newspaper, or a Governmental press release for example. But as Audrey Watters points out, less great if as an individual, you have been…
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Critically examining unbundling
I’m on the advisory board for a project led by Laura Czerniewicz in Cape Town and Neil Morris in Leeds, examining the concept of ‘unbundling’ in higher ed. I came across unbundling first of all back in 2000 with Evans and Wurster’s Blown to Bits book. It’s important to remember that at the time, internet business was new, people didn’t know how it would turn out, and many were still saying it wouldn’t be a big thing. So anything that offered a reasonably intelligent analysis was seized upon. There was a lot that was useful in their book, setting out the idea that services that had previously been held together…
