The never-ending story
When I used to talk and write about digital/open scholarship a lot back around 2012, my go-to example related to the work Katy Jordan had done around MOOC completion rates. It was a good example of unintended, positive consequences of operating in the open, the benefits of sharing and the relationship between traditional and digital practice.
A new, more self-centred version would relate to 25 Years of Ed Tech. It started as a blog series, became an openly licensed book, then a community audiobook which begat a podcast series, and has since returned to an ongoing blog series of 30 years of Ed Tech. All of this relied on the work being openly licensed.
And now, I’ve decided to revisit the book just for fun, in the podcast. I’m republishing the audiobook chapter with a short preface reflecting on what I think about that chapter now and considering it in light of developments such as AI and the pandemic. I’m also listening to each of Laura Pasquini’s podcasts and commenting on the points made in those.
I’m not sure if this will have sufficient legs for the whole 30 years, and the last five will be different as they don’t have audiobook or podcast additions. But it’s fun (for me at least) and I’ve found it interesting to review the chapters, some of which have stood up better than others, in the light of the two big developments I just mentioned, and the insightful comments on the podcasts often prompted me to rethink what I’d written. Maybe all this could fold into a second edition of the book, and then the whole thing could start over again.
Apart from the possibilities that open practice this example offers, I also like the idea of the book not as finished artefact, but as part of an ongoing dialogue with the subject, author(s) and different media. I can still be doing this when I’m 85 and have an immersive “60 years of Ed Tech” metaverse to explore.
