"In shadowy, silent distance grew the iceberg too": universities, technology, work and life
No-one sat on and everyone drove as hard as they could. Matt Stephens, Life in the Grupetto Here’s the thing about professional cycling. It’s not the lycra, it’s not the drugs, and it’s not the spectacle of Lance talking about himself in the third person as that flawed guy who did the bad things. It’s the grupetto: the paradoxical collaboration that breaks out among rivals who are struggling at the back of the race, once the whole thing starts climbing…
Continue ReadingIn the second week of the new summer course, we spent the day together in class. Because summer in Australia is already snapped in two by Christmas, a whole lot of other weirdness can go on while no one’s looking, so we’re flipping the normal timetable and going with two all-day workshops supported by online reflections and activities. Thanks to Steve Wheeler, I’ve also discovered that we’re also haphazardly and instinctively following a primer on the 10 characteristics of authentic…
Continue ReadingHere come the planes They’re American planes. Made in America. (Laurie Anderson, O Superman) Being a terrifically slow learner, I’ve signed up for another MOOC. In my defense, I enrolled a while back and forgot, and now it’s come around just as I’ve been forced to admit that there are only so many chocolates you can eat or stuff down your cleavage before it all falls over. So now I’m in with x thousand others, trying a constructivist MOOC focused…
Continue ReadingHere’s a little grenade-with-the-pin-out that was rolled towards Australia’s university lecturers today by the Minister for Communications, Broadband, and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy. Under the alarmist heading that Australian Universities Must Adapt, Senator Conroy popped this question: “What is a lecture worth if the best lecturer in the world at MIT is online for free for all to access?” Really—that’s it? After all we’ve heard about MOOCs revolutionising higher education, it comes down to this crude bit of cost-benefit…
Continue ReadingSo, I signed up for a Coursera MOOC, and almost immediately the experience turned into Lucy and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a scene that suckers itself onto almost any stressful situation. Lucy and Ethel take a job putting chocolates into wrappers. It’s a conveyor belt scenario, and the task itself is simple; the challenge is to keep pace. Lucy’s enjoying herself, messing about. But one stumble leads to a recovery problem, and before they know it Lucy is eating chocolates…
Continue ReadingThe first time I watched the awful EPIC2020 videos I was so irked by everything about them that I never went back to look carefully at the details of their campaign to reform higher education. But now I have, and I’m beyond irked. I’ve been boosted into the realm of appalled fascination. They’re going to “shatter the paradigm that the future will be anything like the past as well as facilitate discussion and accelerate actions to bring about the transformation of the…
Continue ReadingSomething I learned in high school history has come back unexpectedly while I’ve been brooding about Jonathan Rees’ opposition to MOOCs and his views on what they threaten. A couple of miles away from the place where I grew up is this beautiful Iron Age hill fort: Within the inner circle are the remaining stone foundations of an original castle, and—critically—the well that stored water for the whole settlement. Soldiers controlled the resources in the middle, and the villagers and…
Continue ReadingThe problem with edtech evangelism is that it assumes the most valuable lessons are learned from other people’s success. This is why our lives fill up with stories of exciting tools that have transformed this that or the other thing. Exhausting, really. Given the importance of failure to innovation, it’s interestingly rare to find blogs, lists, journals, or conferences focused on failure, in any field. The Ten Most Awful Mistakes in Online Course Design. Ten Tools I’ll Never Try Again. …
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