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A panel about our podcast turned into another episode for this podcast. You're very welcome.
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.
0:00
Hello listeners of yours, Ed between the choppers pod a bonus episode coming to you from the OERxDomains 21 conference, Clint Martin myself were on a panel in a discord session where we had a candid conversation with some listeners, a few of you had shown up and join the conversation. So things, I didn't attempt to record it if the audio is okay, you'll hear some ambient noise, let's call it some little in and outs, maybe a microwave, who knows it's live. Some I do my best to clean up as best as I could. But I think you'll enjoy the conversation. And hey, it's a bonus episode. So don't listen to it if you don't want to enjoy what we talked about. And it was great hearing from you all. And there is a call for your audio conversation I'm collecting that. I'm hoping to get some in by May 1. So I can start adding some extra bonus episodes with your voice dear listener. So check out the show notes to learn more of where you could submit your own audio reflection for the 25 years a textbook
0:59
thanks.
1:03
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.
1:16
We can tell Clint has a history and radio flash intro. So thanks for that. And welcome everybody to this. We are 21 domains session on 25 years of tech, the audio project, as you know, recording this for a podcast, and so people to interact. So you might want to think of some questions as we're, as we're talking to questions you might have in your mind. What other books might you want to do this week? That would be a good idea with and what challenges did we have in in developing this project? So we're switching it slightly today. So I'm going to be the host and be asking Laura and Clint questions. So I'm going to start with Clint. So, Clint, what was this project about? And why did you choose to talk to your friends in this manner?
2:06
Well, the project was basically taking this book here, which you wrote, and turning it into an audio book version. Yeah. So what we wanted to do, or what I, what the idea that I had is, I wanted to turn this book into an audio book version of it. And the idea behind it came from, well, there's a couple of drivers behind it. First off, it was possible to do because it was released with an open license, it had a creative commons attribution, non derivative license. And we can talk about working with a non derivative book after that. But because Martin decided to publish it openly, and the publishers were in agreements to be able to openly license it, we were able to take it and kind of run with it and do this project and convert it into an audio book version of it. And part of the reason it came up with a, I'd been talking if you read Martin's blog, you'll know that every year he writes a blog post about the books that he reads. And a few years ago, I saw a blog post where I think the number was like 96 books. And so I contacted Barton, I'm like, how did you do that? Like, how do you read 96, but I get through two. And he said, The secret is audiobooks. And so he's been he turned me on to audio books a few years ago. And so when he told me that he was writing, working on turning this blog series of 25 years of edtech into a book, I kind of thought, well, it's it's kind of a shame for someone who loves audio books and consumes audio books so much that he's not going to have an audio version of the book for himself. And so I thought, maybe I can do this. So I contacted Martin, and he thought, yeah, this sounds like a good idea. contacted Athabaskan University Press, they thought it was a good idea. And then at Originally, I was going to do it myself. But then I reached out to a whole bunch of people thinking that this would be really good to see if we could do it as a community project. And so I started gathering people and had a whole bunch of people sign on right away and go, yeah, I'll read a chapter I'll read a chapter and was able to kind of run with it. And then one of the people that I contacted was Laura, who I know does podcasts and asked her to be part of it. And she said, Yeah, I could read it or I'll pass it over to Laura to talk about herpes.
4:33
or tennis is on here as well. We had a little back and forth about would it be fun to still have some banter. Note for our listeners, they're listening this episode later, you're gonna hear a lot of people coming in and out of the discord channel. That's a dilute, dilute, you'll know that I like to an audio, less about the podcast more about the story and hear things behind. So the idea was there's got to be more between the chapters that we don't talk about and the idea of was to make space. So we're not going to get too into it. Now we only have 20 hot minutes. So we put some links into this Google Doc. That's about drafting the book about the chapters how we got started. We've already rambled on about this. So Martin, why don't we jump into another area of this because the bonus episodes are myself at some guests in conversations, many of you have been contributing to that we're really grateful. But let's get back on to what does this mean is we are an IEP as a practice open educational practice? Sure.
5:32
So I think we've got a lot of people in this channel who contributed to that, either the audio book or the book or the podcasts. So yeah, on the kind of idea of open educational practice, I mean, you mentioned Clint, the the open license and what that what that allowed. But I wonder if both of you might want to talk to the kind of effort involved in doing these kind of projects. I've seen a lot people say, well, that looks really cool that we'll do but we should do a thing like that. And, and I agree they should do I think that is excellent. And it's it's an amazing resource, but I think they might be under estimating the effort involved. So perhaps, we'll start with you, Laura, this time, and you can talk about that. And then then click
6:12
sure I have a post it note right now it says Edit blockchain episode chapter 24. That should be out at 1am my time tomorrow. So it takes some time. It takes some resources, it takes some money in some sense. And the good reason why jumped into this project and said I'd love to do this is I miss this community. And I had the time and I actually had a couple backchannel podcast feeds, I could filter this one into, and it was a book that had an ending. So I knew it was reasonable. I could work on this from last June, July, until a few weeks from now, we'll probably have a few episodes in May, Hinton will want your call for audio voice soon. But the labor is I did the work of for myself, producer, wrangling guests, interviewing guests editing audio, and actually editing. So it's great to all commune like this. But there's some production post production that happens, curating links, finding links, and part of the reason why I did this was to open up that conversation to different voices that weren't recording the chapters, but also, so I could learn and the community could learn. And we could ask more questions around these topics that are still resonating with us, not even just around the pandemic this year, but in teaching, learning, and openness as a practice. So that's how I saw it an edtech. And the vehicle and the chapters in the years, get us into the conversation. But we just had just more interesting things. It does take probably, I don't know, two to five hours of my week, but I lovingly do it. But it's not an easy thing to do. And I know, Clint, you've been doing some of those work as well with the chapters.
7:51
Yeah, with the chapters, there was some Yeah, at the beginning, there was a lot of work just kind of like fleshing out the idea talking to people finding volunteers to voice because this is a completely volunteer driven project, none of us are getting paid for doing this project. We're just doing it to kind of as a community building exercise really. And and it's worked really well that way. But there is a lot of work. I mean, I do, I still do like an hour or two each week, as I'm, as I'm kind of updating websites and putting links together and editing programs and things like that. I think, you know, when it comes down to open educational resources, and talking about open educational practices, this is something that, you know, we have to keep in mind. And there are people that are building these things kind of off the side of their desk, and putting in this extra labor to do this, because they love it. And I think there's a good discussion to happen, whether on how we can kind of change that from being off the desk work to actually being paid work that's valued in our institutions, to be able to create open educational resources, share, edit, and modify Open Educational Resources. Oh, I also wanted to add one thing too, about the open educational practice piece is one of the reasons I wanted to do this is is I wanted to try to create a new format for an existing resource. I mean, the title of this is to is, you know, giving a resource legs and that's a journalism term that talks about a new story that just kind of always has a refresh or always has a new angle coming out. And in journalism, you talk about that as a story that has legs and I think there's a parallel there between open educational resources and different ways of distributing content. I'm very inspired by work of George Villette, coos my colleague at Royal Roads University who does these things called research shorts, where he takes a research paper, distills it down and then shares it in a different format. And so I also saw this being something that could, could be kind of like that where we could take it and maybe find a wider audience. By having an audio version of the book,
10:02
fun fact, I helped him start that. Clint, did you? Oh, yeah, no. Yeah, no, I, I think the idea was also about incorporating more voices. And to be honest, I could do better. And as the host, I did what I could to ask people I didn't know, something I knew, I'd love to have other voices that community and I really wanted to open this up. But we even put a call out for open voices and recording because I'd love to have some people from other parts of the world, not just Canadian content, like Clint and I are doing but thinking about it, what's not been told, and what's not been said. And so I do navigate that in my working life across time zones. So I'm think about it a lot. And I don't think we always do this in the open community, or it's not always realistic, because there's some technologies, there's some learning curves, and time zones, and bandwidth and actual bandwidth. So there's some of that that didn't happen in this project. And I would say, that's a call out, I'm gonna own that, because we could do what we could do. But it would be great to have more hosts, it'd be great to have different guests. But people only have their own resources and bandwidth to do some of this work. And I also recognize, we can ask for an open call, but unless you actually say, hey, dm, email, follow up, love to talk with you, I'd like to schedule it, it doesn't happen, it doesn't get done. So that's the other work off the side of the desk. I love that you said that Clint, that we need to talk about is it takes some wrangling. So I i wrangled this with Clint and Martin helped up to introduce this to folks and we just knocked on digital doors to say, Can we have a conversation and it's been a rewarding professional opportunity to talk to some of these folks and bring other voices that may not have been heard from the chapters.
11:47
I think that I think about other voices has been really intriguing for me as an author as well, you know, when you, when you write a book, I was very conscious that it was kind of very much my take on 25 years of tech, I sort of tried to make that clear in the intro in the book. But, you know, you're kind of, you can't help but be kind of centric into some extent. And I think hearing all those different takes that you've had taking the podcast has been really enlightening. For me, I almost want to do it the other way around, we get to have the podcasts first and then write the book because there's so many people actually pretty good point, we should put that in the book, it's really good. To get back to a point on the kind of work thing I was thinking the other day about this, the know, the book, the audio book and the podcasts, that would make a great course, you know, someone wanted to run a course. That's your kind of like, undergrad course in tech right now. And if someone was producing that they've spent a lot of money to produce no resources of that have that kind of quality. And so I think, you know, it's difficult for how you use from there. But I think perhaps just before we open it up to other people who want to come in, haven't been through the joy and the pain, both of you. Are there things that you would do differently. Do you think if you were to do the scan, you know, and I've got a book coming out next year, so we can go through all again, with all of the lessons we've learned.
13:12
He's paying us for this one, right, Clint? Yeah. I don't know. I kind of want to just shut up now because we only have six minutes left. And I'd love to hear from the community. So that's my pro tip is let other people talk and shut up. Why am I talking is the question I asked.
13:34
Yeah, I'm happy. Let's chip in, please. Just click on as we do see that we have some people who have read chapters that are here, some people who have been guests on the podcast, I would really love to hear about your experience and being part of this project too. Because I think other than getting an audio file and the initial conversation I might have had with you. For me. This. This is the first time I've seen some talk to you,
14:00
everyone. I was one of the readers and I thought it was fantastic. I loved the opportunity to read it. I chose the blogging one and I thought it was particularly apropos for me. And I really liked the between the chapters. I thought that was great, too. But then again, I you know, anyone who knows me knows that I like to talk. So podcasting is like my wake dream. Um, I have a question for Martin, though. And you just did in one of the bonus episodes. But as we move through I'm curious is what's the experience been like for you listening to the chapters being read back by the various voices as well as the commentary that we've all been doing in the between the chapters podcast what's what's that been like as the author of of the work?
14:49
Yeah, highly. So it's been interesting, very interesting. I think. First of all, everyone's been really kind so they haven't been any podcasts or people come. This is really rubbish. Chapter is completely wrong. So generally people have sort of been quite constructive. And I think that's kind of what I wanted from the book. You know, it's, it's a kind of conversation starting point, if you've got 25 years, and each chapter is never going to be the kind of definitive take on that technology, so I think use it as the springboard is good. That's what I wanted. But I think it's a bit like often throwback kind of open textbooks, I think they change the nature of your relationship to a textbook and it's no longer a kind of a thing that you receive, that's kind of unchangeable, it becomes much more of the kind of living document, I felt there very much pedestrian, like hearing all those other voices coming. So there's certain I think letting go of control and a certain vulnerability, I think evolved into the sort of high duty boys like, I've released my great tunes the world. And suddenly, all these other people are reading and even just the audio chapters. So focus, people put emphasis in different places. Oh, yeah, I haven't really thought of it like that. And that's kind of been really interested to hear if when people read the chapters, and often the people reading the chapters are far more expert than I am on that particular chapter of technology. So you kind of have to learn to sort of just, you know, accept that. I think you I've really enjoyed it. And I think it's been a real testament to community that people have been coming to it in the spirit of generosity. I think
16:22
I just said to the bad stuff. Don't worry, Martin, I want you to cry. So I just clipped that it's mainly from Cog Dog. And you know, Jim Groom's them,
16:30
you need to hear from them. I just wanted to jump on to what Martin was saying about hoping the book would be a conversation starter. I mean, I've read the chapter. And I'm sorry, Clint, I turned it in late. I am the worst person to do my homework. Between the chapters with Laura, where I had the opportunity to connect again, with drug and gas a bit shoe, I used to work with Edinburgh who have not spoken to in ages. But so I've had some kind of personal connections through this, which have been lovely. But then the wider conversations each time an episode drops. There's a little there's Twitter chat, there's people connecting up in the behind between the chapters, conversations, there are so many communication channels and conversations going around this book that I think what you intended has happened. And it's, it's wonderful. So thank you.
17:22
Yeah, I feel like the book is just like one part of an ecosystem, as you say this often, like lots of chat then when the the episodes are released on Twitter, but also we've got things like, Brian, who's in the chat now did a remix of the covers, people can remix the cover and stuff. There's this kind of whole, the overused word ecosystem kind of around it, which I think is kind of really nice, really makes you feel books just part of that stuff now, and maybe not even the most important part.
17:50
It's like all your, the, the five hours and the possibility of remix, you're living the whole thing. And
17:58
it's beautiful as a model, because it kind of played out organically. And I commend Martin first for like, not trying to be like I heard about it. And I was like, Oh, I didn't get a chance to read a chapter because they're already assigned. But then when Lord invited me it was it was very exciting. And so just the way that that rippled out was beautiful, but also like the whole thing about, he can't be a definitive encyclopedia on this stuff. Because every episode, I'm like,
18:24
Yeah, but but but but but.
18:26
And that's, that's what's really, like, if anything, this demonstrates what oh, we are can do without a lot of the formalisms.
18:34
I recognize I missed a bunch of this conversation. But what I'm wondering is, if any of you have thought of applying this model to an academic journal, so, you know, publish, we publish an academic journal, we read the articles, as podcasts and then host a panel discussion around each of the articles.
19:01
It part of the reason that comes to my mind is I've been using a text voice reader to listen to some articles while I'm, you know, out and about, and oh, my goodness, they're awful. You know, anytime you come to a table or list of citations or anything, it's it's just painful. But listening to somebody read it is totally different.
19:27
Yet the machine learning translation versus a human interaction. I think the good thing about this book was it's open. So we could do this for journal articles that are within the open ecosystem. I think that's one of my first call outs. And similar to like the research shorts, YouTube channel, which Clint or somewhere else will share in the hash tag. You do have to have either permissions or there has to be an openness, access from the authors. But yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And maybe we'll pitch it, calling on Looking forward to hearing where you take this, this is a great
20:03
one. It's
20:04
interesting. You mentioned that calling because I've just started using a service called I think it's called Curio, and I've just I just downloaded it last week. And what Curio does is it's narrated stories from various newspapers. So it's got like New York Times articles on there or Washington Post, it doesn't have the conversation piece afterwards. But I'm sensing that there is a bit of a momentum, at least in sort of the journalism, commercial areas where this kind of stuff is happening. So I think, you know, applying it to open journals would be a great model, and then having the discussion afterwards would be fantastic.
20:39
The accessibility person in me will call out that we wish that we could have transcripts, once again, this is produced by us. So I would actually have transcriptions. And we've seen other podcasting services do that, whether it's music or podcasts, doing audio to text transcriptions and downloadable files. So that's the learning designer means thinking about that. But there's other things to consider if you're going to put this into a course, or a practice or a program that we just didn't, because we hacked this together with the three of us, and that's the production team. The production team, you see here is Clintonite. And then Martin's like an advisor to to this production. So yeah,
21:18
in TV, would I be like the executive producer? No one knows what they actually do. But they just listed at the end?
21:25
No, I think they do more, Martin. So no, no, you're not even. Not even that.
21:31
pandemic means I haven't been able to do anything outside of my job. But so I'm really excited to finally dig into this. But I was wondering about the transcriptions, because that's something is there kind of an automated way to do it that then you can fix? Because like, I'd be happy to help with that, if you know, if it runs through some kind of automation, and then you have to go through and fix it like, yeah, that's just something I'm really interested. Yeah, the
21:55
one that I like, is otter.ai. And I guess we could do that. But it would need a human eye and interaction. So there is that human labor that's still relevant. And I have a few in my own work that we can use. But we just didn't at the time, but if people want to volunteer, and we'll take support afterwards. And that's specifically for Great, thank you, Christina is on my list. And then anyone else who's interested listening to this later, we'd love to, because we try to do our best to do some of that. And I wonder about that for any of our sessions. So when we have conferences, I held my first virtual conference at my organization, we do have some post production work, which are transcriptions, closed captioning, and verifying those are correct. With all resources. Do we do that? Well, for even set a conference? Mm hmm. So
22:42
it's a lot to do. But Otter.ai does work magnificently. But it's almost the equivalent time of editing out. But you do in the post production so I can see why. That's an extra step. But yeah, Otter's pretty fantastic.
22:58
Well, Martin, maybe everyone can open up their mics and just give you a thank you a clap and cheer because you started this. And so we just really appreciate that. So yay,
23:09
yay, thank you.
23:13
Doing a bunch of blog posts, got swag and everything.
23:24
If you want to contribute and have other thoughts, we put a link in the dock that we'll include. It's a call for community voice, so we still would love to hear from you. I will produce it, meaning I'll edit it. If you want to answer any of those audio reflection questions. We'd love to hear from you. So you could record this on any sort of device, not beta, but anything that record audio, email and send it to myself or Clint and we'll add you to some of the bonus reels of the between the chapters podcast. So thank you all for joining us.
23:55
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host Laura Pasquini. For more information for to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of edtech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca