Metaphors podcast round-up

As with the previous version of this post, this is just a prompt to round-up recent episodes of the Metaphors of Ed Tech podcast. I haven’t been announcing each podcast episode release, apart from the ones with guests. You can find all the episodes and links to your preferred podcast platform here. In chronological order here are the episodes and some thoughts on them:

Jaws and Mudlarks – unsurprisingly the Jaws metaphor from the Metaphors book is one of my favourites. I use the Spielberg film to explore some of the reactions to the pandemic. Those beaches will be open for this weekend. I also talk about the digital mudlarks analogy for educational technologists, salvaging nuggets of value from each tide.

Internet design and digital resilience – two metaphors here that continue the theme of the reaction to the online pivot. The design of the internet as a robust system is compared with that of higher education is used to suggest some reactions that higher ed needs to take to be prepared for the next crisis. I try to rehabilitate the term ‘resilience‘ in the next metaphor, which has been morphed to mean something like grit and “it’s all your fault” basically. I return to the original ecology metaphor as a means of considering how higher ed institutions can think about their preparedness for tech developments.

Death Star Economics and Early Internet Metaphors – a couple of metaphors from the blog here that aren’t in the book. The first is a fun one, looking at the economics of creating a Death Star compared with training Stormtroopers to shoot effectively as a metaphor for investment in ed tech and staff at HEIs. The second is the recent post where I looked at early metaphors we applied to the internet when we were struggling to understand what this thing was like, and how they each carried different connotations.

OER23 special, with guest Maren Deepwell – the first guest! After OER23 Maren and I chat about some of the metaphors and themes from the conference. Definitely the most fun episode so far.

The dangers of metaphors – a short episode where, having been a cheerleader for the use of metaphors in ed tech, I explore some of the downsides and areas of caution.

Teaching with metaphors & fiction, with Eamon Costello – another guest episode! These are definitely the best ones. Eamon talks about some of his use of metaphors in teaching, and also comes armed with some heavyweight metaphors of his own.

Visual metaphors, branding and blogging, with Jim Groom – Jim and I talk about the visual metaphors we’ve developed with Bryan Mathers, containers as a metaphor for understanding tech, and runaway metaphors such as Edupunk. Why we haven’t been given our own morning radio show is a mystery.

Smart motorways and ed tech implementation – the last one of this series. A short episode in which I explore the recent post looking at smart motorways and lessons they hold for ed tech.

And that’s it for now. I’ve enjoyed doing the podcast and the low tech, do it yourself nature of the endeavour. It’s amateur hour and I love it for that. But I think I’ve run out of steam with me doing them on my own. I leant on a few people to do guest episodes, but I don’t like to pester people. So, if you want to appear on an episode, and talk about a specific metaphor or metaphors in general, drop me a line, I’d love to record an episode.