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In this episode, Laura Pasquini and Jim Groom reflect back to their first Internet experiences as they get nostalgic about The Web from Chapter 2 of the book.
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:01
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book, 25 years of edtech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura Pasquini.
0:16
Welcome to the podcast, Jim Groom. We're gonna talk about between the chapters, and here we are. Chapter 2 - 1995. The web kinda seems like such a great place.
0:28
When we all believed in it still.
0:31
The web came in my first browser wasn't Netscape browser. I don't know about you.
0:36
Mmosaic. Yeah, so it's interesting, because I have a little story about the web. And I really liked Martin's chapter. And we can talk about that in some detail. Because there are a couple of real moments that I really enjoyed his phrasing. And I'll kind of break that out for you. But so here's my web story. In 1994, I'm on UCLA campus, I work in a a place called audio visual services, where we were basically the the kids on campus who would deliver VCRs, and TVs on these big metal structures on the campus. And they would shake and like we basically, were the kind of AV heads. And I actually worked there for about six, eight months, and I was going to school getting my, my bachelor's in English literature. And I got a promotion. And one of the promotion was I moved from just running these things around campus to scheduling people. And as a result, they gave me a Windows 3.1. I think it was like a Dell 133 megahertz computer, like it was like it was the thing. And I remember that day when they came around, and they basically wired up the machine and turned on the browser. And I was like, Oh, and I had pine email. And they basically showed me, this is what we're going to kind of use and this kind of whole web thing is really cool. This is how you kind of play with it. And then I started searching for like Smurfs, and like the prisoner, and like just stupid things like old video games. And it's funny because the guy who installed it, and he worked at the computer science department, he was basically a student a kind of like I was, and he's like, you know, the internet was discovered on campus here. And I was like, wow, like, I had no idea. And it wasn't discovered on UCLA campus. But it was the place where they switched john, the first node, from Bolton hall that connected to Stanford, and essentially, was the first connection in 1969 1970 of the internet, right. And one of the things I was thinking about, as I was reading this chapter, was that when I would teach about, you know, digital storytelling or the internet, I taught a course called the internet course. One of the questions that was so interesting was like, what's the difference between the internet and the web, right? And there are technical differences, and there's no reason for me to go into it. Martin does a fine job. But the whole idea that the web as one of these 25, like years, almost seems like insane, because the web has become synonymous with the internet, it has become such, like, what is it a mechanism where the thing the part becomes the whole, like the web, which was this technology, that it's hard to believe one person at CERN, on the side of his desk, figured out all of these protocols that then became for anyone born post 1990, or even 85. That was the internet, like, the web was the internet. That's what you meant. And I think that, for me, was really striking when reading this chapter is, you know, it's hard to even recognize that this thing was discovered by a person, it can be identified in as a day job to build this that has become synonymous with what the engineers built in 6970. With the internet, I just love that idea. And, you know, I love obviously, the web. I think the web is the ultimate platform for teaching and learning. But I did dig this chapter because it brought me right back to my discovery point, and to that conflation of the technology of the entire internet, really boiled down to its public facing frame, which is the web which is the what he talks about throughout his book, right? The the technology that's good enough to give everybody access to this space. You know what I mean?
4:59
I love it. why he's knighted. He's like since Sir Tim Berners. Lee. I feel like it's really good that he did bring up like the bits and pieces. And you're the reason why I brought you, sir. Sir Jim Groom of the owning the webs on because I know that like you always impressed upon us in technology and learning spaces, we really have to think about how things are built. And so breaking down. Yeah, not just that it's internet, but it's accessible, that there's these pages, you can create that there's some democratization around it, that it brings us all to equal playing field at one point, and we're still there right now. So the web, I really thought was a way that people could, yes, search and find, I think 95 I was in high school at but I was talking to my partner who was Ireland, he and he did the same thing like you is they brought computers like a public space, like the Oh, two centers, what is in Dublin now. And they would teach you how to click on the internet. And like how to close a browser. And I was like, that was your job. He's like, well, we got paid like part time for this. I was like, great. So we're just having people learning. Like that was some basic things in the 90s. Mid 90s is people getting on and accessing it, not from a complex, big computer system, because it existed before. But for the lay person who would come in and go, I'm going to look for whatever I like that you're looking for the prisoner in Smurfs. So I love that, like that was the example. But I was like, you can interchange messaging. And that's when like, for me, I used it a lot for your emails, some phenomenal thing at the time, or IC q or IRC chats, like that was way to message people, learn from others and share things back and forth. And so the web browser, I think, was revolutionary. So Martin, thank you for this chapter and bring us back to basics. But the learning hand code, HTML is really what I brought you in because I was like, how did you remember to bring us back to brass tacks? Because that's what this chapter really does, I think in a way.
7:06
Yeah, I like it for that too. And, you know, I think part of it, Martin hits home beautifully. And it's one of my favorite lines in the whole chapter. He talks about the moment when the realization and I'll quote, the realization that anyone in the world could now see their page was a revelation, this act now seems like the mythical mudskipper crawling from the sea to the land, a symbolic evolutionary moment, beautifully said Martin, fine work. But I think on top of that, for me, I identified directly with this because I also was in a situation where I was training faculty in the late 90s, to build their own websites, to you know, kind of hand coded HTML. And he's not wrong, that it wasn't scalable at that time until things like front page and you know, you even had like FTP programs Made Easy by geo cities and stuff. But the mentality there, that net artist, Olia Lee, Alina, who's, she's a great net artist, someone who I really dig her work, she does a lot of gf work or GIF work. But she writes extensively about this aesthetic called the doctor or the professor doctor or the doctor Professor page. And I was a little disappointed in Martin that that till the space that he linked to in his paper didn't link to an actual till the space because there is a whole kind of aesthetic of this moment of the web, almost, you know, web 1.0. But almost in some ways, even pre that, where you just had lists of links to resources, you know, to pages, people like like the early kind of prototype for the blog as a link lists that send people to things kind of, you know, a dashboard of things I like that you start to collect, and then you go to, and I think, for me, I really enjoyed that process of making back to Leo, Leo, Leo, Alina making the user, the, you know, the user is a kind of in a very simple way, a programmer, right? The user is actually understanding and creating to create a page, you have to learn HTML markup, you have to understand how that kind of works with the browser, you got to figure out a teepee, right? So there are certain things you got to figure out file structure, you got to figure out things that actually are very useful. And were very useful for me over the next 20 years, like understanding how to name files when they go into a web server, understanding how domains work, understanding what a directory is, versus a subdirectory versus a sub domain, like things that seem esoteric, but in some ways, it's just like, your operating system on your computer on your desk that you work is, you know, a direct analog to that is the operating system that you're running your web server on and pushing out stuff to the web. So I felt that was really, you know, back to a thing like a kind of basic literacy that we were teaching a next generation of faculty and students to understand how this stuff works. Because the key thing that this chapter underscores is the web took off, because it was a really, really powerful way to share educational resources. Right, he talks about it with the open education, or the Open University talks about the idea of we didn't have to send textbooks, we could send them to pages. Like if you had access, which was a question, you really could change the way in which people could learn, right? And it was immediately recognizable, even in 9697.
10:52
Yeah, I think that's something that gets lost on because even when I was in university in the late 90s, in my undergrad, I was doing correspondence, and they were sending us like videotapes, or like CD ROMs. Like, I think about this, because you'd like a communication course, I did a British Isles history course. And I was like, that was still distance, Ed was still distance education, not online learning, because they just weren't there yet. And and I won't say Canada is usually has the curve on some of these things. But we weren't really doing it, we were still doing like, really remote learning, which is, well, you get your course kit, you watch a video, you maybe send something back even and maybe you submit something online or by email, but mainly me, you mail it back. And that's called distance education. And I think bringing it back to even that tilta page, I bet you we could find that in the Wayback Machine. I'm going to look at that later and see if I can look that up. But the till the pages that we had on faculty sites, you're right, it was like, I'd like that you put it as a curated list of Check this out, or this is what I'm about or where you can find these things. And we still have them today. But they look different, in some ways, like we flag and link off, or we've created some other repository for us to share. But it was a way that people could get access to their knowledge and give access to things that you want others to learn about you about what you're working on. I bet you there's still two pages out there, lingering and some there are there are a bunch of them. A live
12:30
takes this. I'm glad that geocities, it's funny that you brought up like geocities and like reading this chapter. I was like, Oh, yeah, like I learned some coding things from geo cities, but maybe also cash my space, like you had to do things like to hack up your stupid page. My space for the kids listening out there was pre Facebook and other social networks, but it was it was more of customizable. And you would do things and we just didn't have that when we shifted past web 1.0. And some of those skills are lost. So how do you think about, I guess retraining another generation, not the ones who had to do it by hand or reminding people how we did before? Like, how does that go these days?
13:14
It's funny, because I think of I think I'm so enamored of that moment, you know, when we were working with faculty and students to get a basic HTML page up, which took, you know, hours of training. So it was not simple, right. But I don't want to like I don't want to like downplay the fact that he's right. It was difficult. But that to me, was not just isolated. That move forward. For me in 2003 2004. I discovered WordPress in about 2004. I had already hated the LMS. You know, in 2002, when I was teaching at the city of mercy in New York, I couldn't stand Blackboard. And I wanted an alternative and being part of a community at CUNY, there was new open source applications, a person who I was a grad who was also a grad student alongside me, he was like, have you seen this open source application called WordPress? And I was like, No, and I didn't this was for me my introduction to cPanel. Because I didn't really understand how that worked on like, I understood HTML. But I didn't understand PHP driven database applications. And that was like the next part of my education to understand how those to communicate, and what's possible with that for people. And so then I spent the next 10 years of my life, kind of doing what I'd done with HTML training, but training people on how to use tools like WordPress or Drupal, open Wikipedia or media wiki, open source applications. So it was effectively the same job I had done training people in HTML, but using now open source applications that were more powerful, that had a more that once they got up and run All right, got up and running for them. The actual editing was seamless, and simple. And that's something that also Facebook and YouTube and Twitter. Oh, that was why they all became, you know, the mainstays of, you know, our, our online social life in some ways. But I think that that consistency of looking at a WordPress blog and then knowing you can click on the text editor and CVA, HTML, now, it's not writing HTML, you're losing some of that kind of literacy. But I think for what you gain in terms of access, it's powerful. So I think my work kind of, like evolved with the web. And like the web seems to me so like when you have like bulletin board systems before. And then like, mediated communications after it. And then in that middle of those two chapters is the web, it just seems to like overshadow everything, right? It's the tree that will let light to anything else. Because it really became, like everything I built my career. On top of that little knowledge I had, I built a company on top of that little knowledge I had like, like a lot of ad tech, I'm sure out there. We got jobs, basically saying, Yeah, I know, HTML. And that was enough. Like people like, you know, HTML, you got a job, you know, HTML, you got a job like, because it was the moment where you didn't need to know that much to actually get a job because it was a transitional period. And I'm fortunate because I'm not a programmer. I'm not an engineer. People who know anything about the web laugh at me. But like, I feel like that's, that's that kind of moment. So we kind of came up with it together. And the real tension throughout the book, Martin's book, I feel is that tension is good enough, like the technology that's good enough wins out. And I think back to your point about why get back to the basics is, at what point does the logic of good enough start to fail us? And I don't have an answer to that. And I don't think Martin, like the fact that I depict like suggest as an answer. He's being somewhat practical with like, this is why these things became. But I think maybe we're at a point in our global context where maybe good enough and are kind of leaving the hard stuff to the engineers and the hard stuff to software developers or ecosystems, we have no control over, because we have no knowledge about might be catching up to us. And that's, you know, that's a complicated, bigger question. But I do think there is a balance we as educators need to hold on to in terms of how much of our presence and our stuff and our like, I don't know our identity, we kind of maybe guard a bit and control a bit away from the machine so to speak.
18:09
Now, that's a good way to put it. I think you said two things. One, this is like he says a creeping chapter two, the other two, I think is a foundational chapter for most of the book, like, we aren't going to talk about LMS is Oh, er, anything else? MOOCs? And without the, without the web? And secondly, with little knowledge of HTML comes great power. I think we need to be in those spaces where we have developers engineers doing the work I like you with hacky and was like, Oh, I learned off Yeah, WordPress, or blogger. And I was like, how do I change a photo to look this way, like InDesign, I learned a little bit of InDesign enough to get me away with Oh, I could maybe build this. And it You're right, it got jobs as jobs that got us opportunities that got us into spaces to have these conversations. But I really think you've made a great point is the crux is we can't lose the ed in the tech part of it. And maybe it's those voices of educators that are thinking about the current problems we're facing and the tensions of where the web is going, like, I don't want this to be a divided space. I don't. And it already is, like, we already know, there's rabbit holes and pockets of weirdness on the web. But how do we bring it back as being part of those conversations and being part of those design considerations and pushing back and I do think that some people are thinking about that, because we're moving into like, logs and analytics and web 2.0 stuff, but I do think it's relevant to talk about is we need to show up and talk to
19:38
this funny because we thought like the weird parts of the web, we're gonna be like, you know, the pet bears in these chat rooms. Right? Right. It's actually like companies like proctorio that are in your office, like sitting on top of you watching you move your eyes. It's such a different notion of the dark like pieces of the web, if we want to say that like, like this idea of the of the web that we hadn't ever imagined, and I like it, like I like it, because the fact that people are challenging some of those, and there have been people for a long time talking about, like, the surveillance mechanisms built into these tools. And that was from the beginning, you know, gives me hope that, you know, the web is still has some of the elements of decentralization, that as Mark framed beautifully in the chapter, define its power, right, and make that idea that you can do all this stuff, you know, and share all this stuff, without necessarily depending upon a centralized authority. And that represents issues, but it also represents opportunities. And so, you know, it's, it's, we're in a different era of the web. And I think digital literacy now is far more complex than saying learn HTML, or learn PHP or learn how databases work. But I think it's a piece of like, understanding how the technology works, understands how the data is collected, understand maybe how they use that data to understand that you were looking at, you know, Smurfs on Amazon, and then five seconds later, Instagram selling us Smurf cheats, right? Like, what's going on there? Like, what's the direct connection? Like, there's something technical that's connecting you across these sites? Isn't that interesting? Might you want to know more? So I don't know, I think that part of it, and it happens, and the evilness of it is not always so clear, or you know, it's not always so black and white. But then you start to see it creep in, more directly. And then for example, in our context, education, like the the proctoring, software stuff, has been eye opening. Right, like we knew it was, it was dangerous. We know it was a problem, right. But now it's like, what, what are we doing? Like, where have we gone as a as a, as an industry? So? I don't know. It's, uh, I don't have any answers. That's great. That's good, too. That's you don't
22:15
know the answers on this. On this podcast? It's just between the chapters here? Um, no.
22:20
What do we do?
22:24
No, this is all great. And I think Yeah, like, I think the questions that we're asking are good, because I do think we're gonna see another shift. The end he leaves us with like, this is like most of the quote him and say, the most significant socio technical change since the invention of the printing press. And 25 years later, that does not seem like hyperbole. And I think we're going to see more of this in some ways. And so we just got to keep our eyes open. We got to speak up and say things, when, and I think we need to address some of those issues. And yeah, as we talk about proctored exams, kind of just did one of those. It's weird and creepy to have them in you watching in your space. And I was like, What else? Like, there's so many other ways to figure out if people are cheating. Why do you have to be watched? Um, but, my question, I think, likethe antithesis of sharing. Yeah, right. Yeah. Like the other side of all the promise that this chapter is kind of predicated on, like, that's the other side of it, being watched, being controlled, you know, being subjugated to someone else's gaze in an uncomfortable way. Like, it's, it's interesting.
23:37
Or maybe it's the oversharing and mis sharing misinformation, sharing, like, I there's, there's those rabbit holes, like, I don't know, I just listened to podcast, New York Times The Rabbit Hole literally like where coupons come in. And that's the thing. And it's like, there's these other like spaces where people are like, this is the truth now, and this isn't part of this chapter. But it does open up to like, what's the right way to do things? And I think educators bringing this into higher ed and K-12. And others learning spaces are trying to figure out like, what's the best way to do it? Give access, but also recognize access isn't going to be equal, there's going to be an inequity in some shape or form.
24:20
I think an interesting thing about the web, from the point of view of 1995. Right, so that's the year and I agree, I think 95 is a good way to place the web, is to think about things like download speeds, right? Like download speeds, you would wait, you know, literally 24 hours, and this was on a fast connection 460 megabyte file to download, like through UCLA, like we had a very fast connection for the time, and like you would wait like hours for Earthworm Jim or Duke Nukem or Doom to download like you would go to these were so Cuz the other thing, it was unregulated, right? Like, no one really figured it out. So you could go and get basically any software, you know, they still had Photoshop back there you go go to websites and get them, you had no problem with access to software or games, like you could get anything that were crack sites and they were all wide open. Like, it was literally like you imagine America in the 1860s or 70s with the saloon. And like these one horse towns, people come in, they kill each other, and they leave like, that was like the web in 1995,
25:35
the wild west of the web, it was great.
25:38
I loved that part. Like that's I came for the Smurfs, but I stayed for the free software.
25:45
I love that. And I also think these were times that people weren't sure like how you would use it because getting on there's a sound and maybe I'll find this in like one of the internet archives, the modem dial up. I was like, Don't pick up the phone, mom. Cuz someone picked up the phone, you're disconnected, you're like, gotta get back on.
26:10
So do you remember in your you probably do, where AOL like basically would send, like CD ROMs like this is as they were kind of going away. And like you started to get like cable connections and the web cut faster. And then you could do things like Napster and limewire, etc. But like, they would send CDs. And I remember because this is the mentality. It was like, how could they afford to send out a CD? That's how much I didn't understand the technology. I was like, how can AOL afford to send the CD to everybody? Like, how can they do it? And you know, obviously, it's pennies. But the idea there was so weird that AOL was the portal for so many, at least Americans in the in the 90s. And I'm sure every nation had their own portal. But one of the things I found interesting recently as a kind of similar parallel experience to what Martin is doing, although not nearly as good, is I was watching six seasons of the sopranos during lockdown. I just rewatch it, right, as you do. And one of the things that was weird to speak about the web is sharing and the early web. It was the first episode, it was the first season so it was 99. You had Meadow soprano, Tony Soprano, the boxsters daughter, showing AJ soprano, his son who's younger than meadow, a website. That is like an old school, like, you know, till the space website with the blinking tags and the gifts about mobsters. And it was basically like someone's pet project, because those websites were with a hierarchy of the New York and New Jersey, my family's. And Meadow says, look, AJ, our dad is a, you know, a captain in the New York mafia. And AJ said, What, and it was interesting, because that's not something they saw at that point on television, in the newspaper, anywhere else. It's something they saw on a homemade website, in Meadows bedroom, on her, you know, whatever it was gateway computer. And I thought that was like, there is like a whole tracking of the internet and the development of even down to the CD ROMs that they sent throughout the sopranos that I didn't see the first time because I was in it. But this time, they were tracking some of that technical development and just how crucial it was right to the changing nature of you know, everything and then the.com boom, and all the money that poured into those one web 1.0 websites and then what that meant for the web, I don't know it's so interesting, the whole thing
29:02
I love that you're like mapping it to someone in media studies has done that is mapped the internet across TV and film in some way. No, America Online was in America only Jim. I was in Canada then. But I learned did acquire Netscape. So I think Netscape was our entry point. So we never got the CD, CD ROMs but I am aware because it's like a flashpoint in many different shows and movies. And I even like heard, I'm like, wait, wait, don't tell me that an NPR Quiz Show. Like essentially one of the drivers for Uber. Lyft was the old AOL startup person had them in the trunk of his car. I was like, wow, this like it goes way back. It goes deep here. Um, yeah, I think the web for me, and I think about it in terms of like everything I studied, I could pull from the web and people I could meet from the web and people and things I could do and learn from where would we Without the web, Martin: bless you for this chapter, thank you for reminding us how important the web is.
30:07
Big fan.
30:09
Big fan? Well, I guess let's see, for this chapter, we have questions for Martin. Besides, where's the web can go next. And what are we going to do about?
30:17
Me?
30:18
I do have a question for Martin. I'm surprised Martin that like, Well, no, actually. It would only be funny if it were here. Yeah. I was gonna joke with him and say, Why didn't you have me do the blogging section? Here's
30:34
my call. You can't blame Martin for that between the chapters alone that I'm the one asking people to do some interviews and people volunteering. So
30:40
there you go. Now there's there's good people. I'm fine. Having done the web, the web is far more expansive. And it was a panic. So no, thank you.
30:48
I appreciate your time, Jim. Always a pleasure.
30:53
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host, Laura Pasquini. For more information or to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of edtech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca yours dot open ed.ca