25 Years of Ed Tech

A huge thank you to the OE Global community for awarding our project a 2021 Open Education Award of Excellence for Reuse/ Remix/ Adaptation. for the 25 Years of EdTech: The Serialized Audio Version. From the OE Global Awards team: 

• Remixing the physical book into an audiobook has increased accessibility by providing the text in an alternate format.
• Drawing together the open education community around the reading of the text sparked the companion “Between the Chapters” podcast, providing a deeper dive and critical analysis by experts into the topic of each chapter. This has added an additional layer of richness to the original book. 
• The weekly podcast release schedule, and accompanying critical analysis created a fundamentally new way to experience the book – slower and in bitesize chunks. 
• Each episode of the main recording or the companion podcast also now exists as an OER available for future use / reuse.

This was a project that could not have happened without an openly licensed book so thank you @mweller & @au_press -- thank you so much! This is just a quick thank you speech (in podcast format, of course) from Laura and Clint.

And a huge thank you to all the volunteers who voiced and/or guested as part of the project. We have listed everyone by name below (and we hope we did not miss anyone who contributed):

Bonni Stachowiak, Jeffery Saddoris, Tim Carson, Ken Bauer, Angela Gunder, Brian Lamb, Lorna M. Campbell & Phil Barker, Tom Farrelly, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Catherine Cronin, Chad Flinn, Sukaina Walji, Grant Potter, Julian Prior, Simon Horrocks, Terry Greene, Laura Czerniewicz, Rajiv Jhangiani, Brenna Clarke Gray, Deb Baff, Maha Bali , Caroline kuhn, Anne-Marie Scott, Alan Levine, Jim Groom, Mark Brown, Clare Thompson, Jessie Stommel Mark Guzdial, Kelvin Bentley Brian Lamb John Robertson D’Arcy Norman Laura Gibbs Bonnie Stewart, Maren Deepwell, Judith Pete, Virginia Rodés Bryan Alexander, Alexandra Pickett, Sara Frick, Orna Farrell, David Wicks, Sue Beckingham, Chrissi Nerantzi, Tanis Morgan Autumm Caines, Rebecca Hogue, Christian Frierich, Helen DeWaard, Dave Cormier, Rolin Moe, Amanda Coolidge, George Veletsianos Dragan Gasevic, Joyce Seitzinger, Chris Gilliard, David Kernohan, Audrey Watters, sava sahali singh

Do you have thoughts, comments, or questions about this podcast? Send us a message or tweet. 

This 25 Years of Ed Tech Audio Project has been a blast! Thanks to all of the community:

• Readers of the chapters
• Guests for the "Between the Chapters" book club episodes
• The community of listeners
• Martin Weller -- who let us remix his book!

We appreciate ALL of you and are grateful for your contributions in this @YearsEd audiobook project. Thanks y'all! 

In this episode, you'll hear Clint Lalonde and Laura Pasquini give their 4 L Retrospective -- the things they loved, loathed, longed for, and Learned + what's next on the horizon of audio works.

Did you miss this BONUS episode?: #OERxDomains21 Panel: OER & the @YearsEd Project

We want to hear from you, dear @YearsEd listener! Submit your audio reflections by May 15th to add your voice to the community audiobook project! #25YearsOfEdTech: Call for Audio Reflections When recorded, send a message or tweet. If/When we receive these audio reflections, you might see a few extra episodes in this podcast feed. :)

Podcast episode art: X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Remix by Laura Pasquini.

Having surveyed one particular take on 25 years of ed tech, it is now possible to synthesize some generalities. In this chapter, several themes arising from the analysis of this history will be proposed, and then some suggestions regarding what this means for the next 25 years of ed tech will be proffered. Read by Martin Weller.

For Between the Chapters episode, Laura is in conversation with Audrey Watters and sava saheli singh to navigate these troubling waters of educational technology. This episode swirls around the ed tech’s dystopian storm from Chapter 25; however, we all agreed there are many dark aspects from previous chapters and years prior to hit the fever pitch of 2018.  The issues and challenges of a number teaching and learning technologies have been brought up in previous bonus book club chats. Beyond avoiding the sci-fi plot being drafted by technology companies, we can find agency through refusal and doing more than just being critical of  ed tech. We need to return to a sense of “the commons” in higher ed, where care and compassion  coexist with our practices -- let’s pack up our values & build that space again, my friends.

• New Round of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Grants Steers Clear of Ed Tech 
• Pushback Against Summit Learning Implementation in Kansas – “Start of a Rebellion,” or a Learning Experience?
• So You Want the Tips and Tricks of EdTech Integration… (Sal Khan)
• Ender’s Game (book)
• Black Mirror (TV)
• How China Is Using “Social Credit Scores” to Reward and Punish Its Citizens
• The West could be closer to China's system of 'social credit scoring' than you think
• Networked professional identity and community online (reflections)
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
• Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming
• Pushback Is Growing Against Automated Proctoring Services. But So Is Their Use
• Proctorio vs. Ian Linketter Defence  
  • Background: Ed-Tech Specialist Fights Proctorio Lawsuit
• Listening to Refusal: Opening Keynote for #APTconf 2019 by Donna Lanclos
• Refusal, Partnership, and Countering Educational Technology’s Harms by Charles Logan 
• Un-Annotated by Audrey Watters 
• More than 60 academic programs at Laurentian University cut due to insolvency issues
• Oakland school board unanimously agrees to eliminate its police force
• We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
• What is the Prison Industrial Complex?

Questions asked:

• Where do the responsibilities lie for educational technology?
• When was the last time you resisted technology? How do you use refusal in ed tech?
• What should we refuse or resist more, in general? 
• Where did the common go in our shared institutions?
• How can we build a better community to have reciprocity and responsibility for one another in ed tech/higher ed/life?
• What if we do decide that ed tech makes things worse?
• Where do we go if ed tech is actually a dystopian project?
• What is it that we value that is not wrapped up in ed tech we want to take with us?
• How do we reclaim some of the agency, hope, and good stuff we thought would come out of ed tech?
• If there is a commons somewhere, where is it? Can we get an invite?

Continue learning from these guests of the pod:

• Audrey: https://audreywatters.com/
• sava: https://www.screeningsurveillance.com/ 

We want to hear from you, dear @YearsEd listener! Submit your audio reflections by May 1st to add your voice to the community audiobook project! #25YearsOfEdTech: Call for Audio Reflections When recorded, send a message or tweet.

Do you have directions out of the ed tech wasteland? Are you building the commons somewhere? If so, tell us about it! Send a message or tweet. Podcast episode art: X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Remix by kevin tsakuhhin.

For this final year of the 25, a trend rather than a technology is the focus. There is in much of ed tech a growing divide, particularly in evidence at conferences. One camp is largely uncritical, seeing ed tech as a sort of Silicon Valley-inspired, technological utopia that will cure all of education’s problems. This is often a reflection-free zone, because the whole basis of this industry is built on selling perfect solutions, often to problems that have been artificially concocted. In contrast to this is a developing strand of criticality around the role of technology in society and in education in particular. This camp can sometimes be guilty of being overly critical, seeking reasons to refute every technology and dismiss any change. However, with the impact of social media on politics, Russian bots, disinformation, data surveillance, and numerous privacy scares, the need for a critical approach is apparent. Being skeptical about technology can no longer be seen as a specialist interest. Read by Anne-Marie Scott.

For this Between the Chapter episode, Laura chats with David Kernohan about the blockchain and other odd things happening around the year 2017: Chapter 24. This episode will not explain what the blockchain is, but take a broad perspective about the times, questioning trust, and changing of systems. Spoiler Alert: We don’t want to crush your hopes and dreams about blockchains, but there's no real lasting impact for it in higher ed. 

• Chapter 2: Blockchain. Blockwhat?! (Season 1 of ZigZag pod for more crypto)
• Still not sure about it: Here’s a Blockchain Technologies course
• The Blockchain Revolution and Higher Education via Educause
• How blockchain could change higher ed via IBM
• How Blockchains are Transforming Adult Education by @johndmk
• Blockchain in Education via US Office of Educational Technology
• A Fresh Look at Blockchain in Higher Ed
• Digital Diploma debuts at MIT
• The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols
• On Expertise in Higher Ed
• Triumph of the Thought Leader… and the Eclipse of the Public Intellectual
• We Don’t Need No Stinking Thought Leaders
• Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight
• “Give us back our old gods”
• It’s good to be king…
• People want to hear from experts
• The Role of Public Intellectual by Alan Lightman
• Blockchain – don’t ask how, ask why by David Kernohan
• Democratizing Ideologies and Inequality Regimes are @tressiemcphd’s observations on “roaming autodidacts”
• Black Cyberfeminism: Intersectionality, Institutions and Digital Sociology (Daniels, Gregory, & McMillan Cottom, 2016)
• Roaming Autodidacts and the Neo-Reactionaries #OER17
• 'Age Of Anger' Chronicles Rise Of Populist Backlash
• A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling; TLDR article
• Libertarian vs. Bear
• Outlawed by Cara North
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• What You Need to Know About NFTs
• What's An NFT? And Why Are People Paying Millions To Buy Them?
• Enjoyable & factually accurate: NFTs - SNL skit

Questions:

• How can we create a set of ground rules that share trust and expertise in learning, credentials, and more? Will blockchain help?
• How are you thinking about long term storage of digital artifacts, projects, and initiatives?
• How do we decide which digital artifacts are given resources, time and money, to preserve these learning objects?

Are you interested in owning an NFT art piece of Martin Weller’s face? Are you using blockchain technology in higher ed? Send a message or tweet. Podcast episode art: X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Remix by Laura Pasquni.

We want to hear from YOU, dear @YearsEd listener! Submit your audio reflections by May 1st to add your voice to the community audiobook project! #25YearsOfEdTech: Call for Audio Reflections

In contemporary journalism, if a news story is described as “having legs” it means it has the ability to evolve and remain relevant over a long period of time to a wide community. This concept of “having legs” can also be applied to the creation of OER as there is an embedded assumption by the creator of a work that, by assigning an open license to it, their work will become flexible enough to develop “legs” and continue to be successful on its own through adaptation and adoption by others. On this panel from April 21st we talk about the “legs” on #25YearsOfEdTech lessons learned and things to consider for OEP work. Apologies for the extra sounds, we forgot to turn off the Discord notifications so you will hear people coming and going from our channel. Enjoy!

• Does this story have legs?
• Google Doc from the session
• Archived Video of this Session
• Research Shorts with @veletsianos 
• Laura’s “behind the making” of Research Shorts
• How “Between the Chapters” got started
• Transcriptions: otter.ai & volunteer help?

Listen to these podcast episodes to learn more about:

• The drafting of the book -- from blog post to open book with Martin Weller
• The how & why this audio project got started with Clint, Laura & Martin
• The production, tools, and process of making of the bonus “Between the Chapters” episodes Laura is interviewed by Jason Finnery
• The call for the community to participate to share their audio reflections a metapod with Martin, Clint & Laura + blog for the call to podcast

We want to hear from you, dear @YearsEd listener! Submit your audio reflections by May 1st to add your voice to the community audiobook project! #25YearsOfEdTech: Call for Audio Reflections. When recorded, send a message or tweet. 

Of all the technologies covered in this book, blockchain is perhaps the most perplexing, both in how it works and in terms of its purpose in education. I include it because it received a lot of attention, but also because it is indicative of the type of hype that surrounds a new technology that does not seem to address a clear need. Read by Caroline Kuhn.

In this episode of Between the Chapters, Laura chats with Chris Gilliard about artificial intelligence (A.I.) in educational technology from Chapter 23 of Martin’s book. If you don’t follow the prolific Twitter account of @hybervisible -- you should. He’s been railing against the broad, sweeping claims ed tech vendors make about A.I. and outcomes of these software/systems in higher ed for a while. How does ed tech codify teaching, learning, and administration needs at our universities and colleges with a.i.? If things seem magical or improbable, we need to have more critical questions and understanding of how these “black boxes” work for our campus stakeholders. We talk about how robots may or may not be coming for our jobs, and what we need to understand about the technologies implemented for our work.

• Artificial intelligence 
• As LL Cool J says “Don’t Call It A Comeback”
• Potemkin AI by Jathan Sadowski
• Mechanical Turk
• Definitions via IBM: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning
• WALL-E
• Not Cheating: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
• How to Prevent Zoom-Bombing
• An ed-tech specialist spoke out about remote testing software — and now he’s being sued
• Under Surveillance: Privacy, Rights, and Those Capitalizing On Us
• Texas A&M Drops “Race” from Student Risk Algorithm Following MarkupInvestigation
• Between the Chapters: Learning Analytics - asked what is learning?
• How AI and Data Could Personalize Higher Education via HBR
• Successful AI Examples in Higher Education That Can Inspire Our Future 
• How AI Chatbots and Virtual Assistants Will Transcend the Current Constructs of Education 
• How Ed Tech Is Exploiting Students by Chris Gilliard
• Proctorio Is Using Racist Algorithms to Detect Faces
• You and the Algorithm: It Takes Two to Tango
• Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education – where are the educators? (Richter at a., 2019)
• The Future of Advising 
• 2016: The shifting landscape of tech platforms, services
• Student Affairs Professionals on Facebook: An Empirical Look (Eaton et al., 2020)
• 6 reasons Artificial Intelligence technology will never take over from human teachers 
• The Future of Work: Technology and Robots and Digital Literacy… OH MY!
• Documentary to Watch: Coded Bias 
• About the Doc: Coded Bias - Your Undivided Attention

Questions and thoughts for the community:

• If the ed tech tool seems magical or improbable for what it can do -- it probably is.
• What’s the impact for the platforms and ed tech tools you use? 
• What kind of agency/choice do your campus stakeholders have for the platforms they have to use for teaching/learning/research?
• Does anyone have examples of student surveys/interview questions you used to revaluate ed tech tools you are evaluating?

Are you seeking a robot application for your job? What do you think about A.I. in higher ed? Let us know -- send a message or tweet. Podcast episode art: X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Remix by Franny French.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an interesting case study in ed tech, combining several themes that have already arisen in this book: promise versus reality, the cyclical nature of ed tech, and the increasingly thorny ethical issues raised by its application. Read by Maha Bali.

Read the chapter and see a list of all the book references on the Athabasca Press site.