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“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book, 25 years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura Pasquini.
0:15
Hello, and welcome. We reached the end. So it's actually not between the chapters anymore. But it's just the end of the book. So, I am going to be joined by Clint, my audio production partner in crime for this project. And we're going to take a retrospective to what is the 25 Years Ed Tech audio book project and the between the chapters episodes, we're going to reflect back on that. And at the end, you'll hear a little thank you and chip in there from Martin, we are so gracious for letting us share and use this open educational resource for the podcast. We hope you enjoy it. And P.S. listeners, we still want to hear from you. So if you have an audio reflection you want to share, you could sneak into the podcast if you submit it before May 15. Thanks. Is this where we play the song closing time? Clint?
1:05
closing one last time, we don't have the rights for that. So I'm not gonna do that one.
1:10
So there's something about that there's like it's, you know, that song, which I always knew from the 90s. But it's actually like the, the, the there's a phrase in there about that's based on like in some from some Greek philosopher or something from Seneca. I can't remember what the Yeah, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings. And that's it. That's the line I like, that's actually like a deep philosophical line from like, Seneca. I would have never thought that from like a 90s. I am
1:42
loving this little piece of knowledge and tidbit listeners keeping this in. We're at the ends. I have so many songs I want to say, ya
1:51
know, The Beatles,
1:53
right. There you go. I'm just gonna go, boys. Man. It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. Yeah, I think it's been like really fun to do this with you clients. For listeners. I hope they know that we don't like work together. Really?
2:13
No, we don't we just hang out on zoom calls. And in chat. We though we now live fairly close to each other. That's, that's different.
2:20
Yeah, I was inspired by like, your work life and where you live? So I moved here? No, that was my plan. So yeah, I love that we are in the same time zone. So that's my retrospective for love. What have you loved about this project? Clint?
2:34
Oh, the community that has come together and just having this project. I've talked about this many times. But you know, to be able to have like a concrete project where I can pull in these people from my network. And the people who stepped forward and volunteered and gave their time to do the readings to be participants in the podcast to create this really rich artifact to go along with Martin's book. And just the people that came together to do that is really going to be the, you know, when I look back on this project in 10 years, I'm going to be like, Oh, yeah, that was really great. All the people that came together and the people I had a chance to work with that I've never worked with before, but have always inspired me to, to do that. So that'll be my that's the thing that I love the most.
3:12
I love it. Yeah, I think it's about the people too. I've also loved learning from so many people, I people that I know, and I didn't know and their willingness and time to share knowledge and make me look up things for show notes. Because I was like, What is that even about? I have no idea. So I've loved their candid conversations, the questions they've asked, and the things that we're kind of pushing back for the topic. So like, it's Ed Tech, but we really got into some other like deep topics, philosophies, questions, and the community of listeners that like, I know, listen, and tweet and share and pull out the things we say from each episode has been really fun from the between the chapter side and I really don't know. So this is like one of my few beacons of hope in a pandemic, because it was something to look forward to like I actually I won't say I loved editing, but it it reminded me when I got to listen back have really interesting ideas and thoughts from this community that we should always hold to, because that's a strong value. I think that we are questioning and we are considering what the future could be. And Martin never planned in this book. But it gave us some ideas to talk about in the pandemic this last year to come together on years times places, and maybe a little technology.
4:33
I think to the you know, listening to the between the chapters, conversations, you know how I will I've been struck with how gracious Martin has been throughout this whole process, too. Because, you know, there's a lot of those conversations that go well, I don't really agree with what Martin was saying here or the timelines don't quite I would have actually put this a lot earlier and stuff and, you know, Martin, every time you talk to Martin about He's like, yeah, yeah, that's that's good. That's, that's great. Whereas you know, that does not always happen with people who, you know, are so open with their work that sometimes they can feel quite guarded and defensive about it. And so you know, Martin's graciousness has been, has really shines through in this project as well.
5:13
Huge gratitude, we're going to talk about you mark, because you're not here. And I will agree. Like I think, open as a practice is a really hard thing to do and put in an open book and having people remix it like this and be willing to share knowledge source and recognize there's like, a room for like care and other kind of thoughts to come in, I think is really cool. And I know that other folks listening want to use this for courses want to use this for their own practice, or reflect on themselves. I think that's just a continuation of like, knowledge doesn't have to be done. When you write a book, it's hard to like, say is that my final word, probably not. Because you get some retrospect on it. And we'll have the same thing for these episodes, we've hosted on both the book chapters and readings, as well as between the chapters, but it's been fun along the way. And maybe we'll look back at this artifact and this kind of journey, as a documentation of what we're thinking of that time.
6:08
You know, you hit on something there, too, about the, there's, there's vulnerability in being open, right, and putting your ideas out there. And, and I think this is a really great example that runs counter to what we often hear about what's happening on the internet and the negativity and sort of the, you know, the the trolling, and that kind of that kind of behavior that happens. But, you know, here's an example of somebody who was open, put their ideas out there, and then was open to other ideas, and the community treated them with respect, you know, they they pushed back, but there was definite respect there. And a really good way to show how constructive criticism how constructive dialogue can happen. And, you know, not stepping down on somebody for being open and putting their ideas out there.
6:57
And that's good. All right, let's move on to the lowest. What did you loathe about this project?
7:05
Oh, what did I lose? Well, yeah, I
7:07
didn't have to do it a lot. But you know, as you'll notice, because you're a project manager, and sometimes a good part of being a project manager is having to just kind of tap people on the shoulders all the time, until you feel like you're being an annoyance. And not that I had to do that a ton. But sometimes I was like, you know, people are so gracious with their time, and then I'd have to kind of tap them on the shoulder and say, um, I have a deadline coming up, and I just, I need to get this done. And, you know, I would sometimes feel like I was like, annoying people who are volunteering their time. So you know, I often that that was just me. Wait, you have that part of it?
7:43
Yeah, no, I'm totally with you, the wrangling. The wrangling of guests. Like I appreciate this. This is all like a labor of love. And we talked about this at the OCR cross domains. 21 conference is getting people to come on volunteering their time, we're volunteering to that invisible labor is labor. And there's so many cool communities out there and projects like like this, that we want to call out this invisible labor and the work behind the scenes is probably work. But things we do, because we care about this. But it's still like time spent to be like, Hey, it's me. We can we talk or let me explain what this is. or you don't know me. But like, if I could have like a little like producer to do that, like I was like, that's I think one of the things, I don't mind shoulder topping digitally for folks come on, but I think it's the planning and where it fits in. Because because this isn't a full time job. So figure out where it fits in and how to do it and how to do it best in a mindful way. And that you did ahead of time. So I want someone else to be that project manager. So that's my load for and maybe long for as well. What did you long for? Oh, let's
8:55
wait long for Yeah, this one was tough. I didn't know what I, you know, I I don't know that there was anything that I necessarily longed for, with this project wanting to take the route of going like, I
9:09
don't know, you don't know?
9:11
I don't know if you Okay, we start with you. What did you longing for? Maybe trigger some ideas? Yeah.
9:15
So I was thinking about this, um, I really want this to be really part of a community and for in the global community of OCR and openness and edtech. Around the world, I would long for other voices in the community. And I said this in our session that we did a panel on about it. And we are domains and I really do want other types of voices elevated and amplified. And it was hard to top in them not because the time zones clap, no problem being up at four in the morning to capture someone across. But it's it's the access points. It's the understanding. It's finding the people that aren't always elevated. And in the world of social media and media. There's a tendency to drift towards people that are Don't or put themselves out there more. And I really want, I think I longed for voices that aren't often heard. And they might be upcoming scholars, they might be people in practice, they're doing some of this work. So I think I longed for more community involvement and still do hints, hints, I'd love to have their voices. And we asked from January to like recently have community voices to come in. And just one offs, I would love to have some of their voices and I would even take my labor of editing production, to put them into an episode. So I think that's what I still longed for, is really reaching other people in diverse voices in different ways. And diversity means everything from where they are working to where they live in the world to their actual rule and function around educational technology, because I don't know if we always had that be as inclusive or open as I would have liked it.
10:55
Yeah, I guess that's always one of the challenges of doing, I guess, in, in research, this is kind of like convenient sampling, right? It's like you're tapping on your network. And, you know, if your network is, is not necessarily diverse, you're not necessarily going to have that diverse richness of voices. And so, yeah, I don't know, maybe maybe snowballing it a little bit more with, you know, when when you're talking to people about participating, you know, hey, who else? Who else do you think might be interested in doing this project? Or who else you know, has a voice in, in your network that you think should be amplified and brought forward on this specific topic? So yeah,
11:33
we did the best we could. And like the other long for came up, we talked about like transcripts, I would long for someone to like bankroll us to like, have paid work. So of the getting transcriptions, we have some automated services and checking them. And there were some great volunteers. So it would be, it would have been cool to have some opportunities for, like the episodes, that between the chapter episodes, and that might still happen in some space or time later, but I think it would be create more accessibility in having a transcript. I'm also scared about what some of those transcripts might say, though, but still be good.
12:09
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That would be good. Yeah. And you know, with the book, of course, we have the book. So this is true. The transcript there for at least the text is, is there now an alternative formats?
12:20
This is true, but who knows, maybe someone else will help us remix. And we'll, we'll keep people posted and put resources the website. The last Oh, is learned. So what did you learn?
12:34
I learned that I really liked audio editing. You know, it's sounds like such a, you know, I'm a technician is hard. But you know, that's where I, that's where my career started. I started as a radio producer, and I, you know, I started physically cutting reel to reel tape to do editing, you know, before in back in the digital age and pre digital age. And one thing I really love doing is, like I said, Every Sunday morning, I would sit down and I would watch a soccer game. And then after it, which happened at six o'clock in the morning, here, the English League, and then after that, I would just sit down for a couple of hours and edits in the quiet time, while the rest of the family was sleeping. And I I really love the process of going through and editing and adding in, you know, I, you know, I didn't do a lot of processing, but adding in the processing and just the part of actually making media, I really enjoyed that.
13:29
I learned that I should have asked you to teach me how to do production because I chopped mine together. And I was like, Hey, clickdo so much more than I do. And this is Yeah, pulling back the curtain. We both did our own editing of like the chapters and the episodes. And why did I come to Clint, this is why I knew you were your radio background. And I was like, I'm still like hacking some of these tools together. That's my big learning. I learned that people have a lot of generosity in this community. And I don't work directly in higher ed anymore. I'm adjacent I do some work in and around and support my colleagues. But I learned that this is a really valuable community working in teaching and learning, openness, attack. We've all come together around these topics and years and chapters. I just learned that there's such power in keeping your those networks strong, and still to grow and have conversations with them. And I think we have some relative things we could talk across what learning means and teaching means. So I'm reminded that this project loops me back to some of those colleagues that I kind of miss in academia and I really do value what I've learned over the last like 10 plus years, from being part of these groups and conversations and it's been really cool to say just because you leave a place a time a job or role a function doesn't mean you leave some of what you've learned from others and you'll take some of them into whatever you do next is kind of what I'm taking from this project. Why it was good to have you back Laura and
14:56
stick around. Fun
14:59
also somewhere else, you know, you can't can't get rid of me. I'm like a cockroach. cockroach, I will come up in there. And he else we learned, what did you learn, I'm trying to think I kind of liked editing, but don't tell anyone else that because then they'll have me do more podcasts.
15:15
I learned that, well, I knew this, I knew this already. But it was like a nice a nice practical project to have this about the you know, the benefits of being open and what what can happen when when you have something that is open and openly licensed, and you know, being able to take that artifact and be able to repurpose it and do something new with it. I mean, I love examples like that. I don't think we do enough of that in education and in open education with open educational resources, I think the tendency is always to start building something new, I want to build a new textbook, it's going to be an open textbook, but I want to start from scratch or I'm going to build a new open course or something. Whereas you know, there are great resources out there that can be reused. That is one of the benefits of open education and Creative Commons licensed materials. And so I was, you know, I was happy to be able to have a project that was able to build on that.
16:08
I learned that you still learn things by topics, even if you think you know, like, I learned that dropping the expertise Hots and asking more questions and listening to people, which I know this to be true is is so powerful. And people think I knew some of these topics I didn't I was like, I don't really know. But I'm gonna, like be willing to, like, ask those things or stay things that I'm not sure I'm aware of. I took those show notes. They weren't for any of y'all, they were for me, I was like, I need to look this up and find out what this is and drop those links into the resources because I think it just enriched as I process, the editing, and like went through chopped up a little bit of production, I think I realized I was like, oh, there's so much other things that were brought up in this episode that I just want to remind myself and dig into a bit more. And that's really why I created those show notes. And I guess they've been valuable to me, and I think others that are have been listening. So that's been helpful to hear multimodal, that's me,
17:02
something else I learned too, that was brought up again by Martin and the conclusion just around the subject matter is that, you know, my career has its, you know, I come from a similar spaces as Martin, you know, we're, we're, we're, you know, white, heterosexual cisgender, you know, in, in positions of privilege. And so, you know, I see a lot of my history in the history of this book. And, and, and part of what I picked up on the conclusion, again, was that as much as that history doesn't seem to change, it has changed a lot. So you know, and I think the example that Martin used in the in the book was around the idea of reading, if you look at reading today, compared to reading 25 years ago, reading hasn't fundamentally changed. I mean, we still read in a whole bunch of different ways. But the context around reading has changed immensely. The way people acquire books, whether they read it in paper, whether they read it in an E text, like all of these, these contexts have changed. So while the process of reading hasn't really changed, the process of reading has actually really changed. And it's the same thing in in higher education, because I think sometimes in higher education, people are so quick to throw out the nothing ever changes in higher ed, well, actually, a lot has changed in higher ed over the past 25 years. But fundamentally, there are things that haven't changed about higher education. And maybe those are things that we don't want changed about higher education. So. So that was something that just was reinforced. And I learned again, as I went through the book,
18:43
yeah, learning. This conclusion reminded me learning that things are cyclical, that we do forget about these things we tried in the past that things in the past are still relevant, which I'm history major, and undergrad. And I think some of the roots and things we could take from doesn't mean they're always right. But we could learn what was done. Because we're going to have to think about new ways of being in educational technology. And it's not going to be what is like the status quo has been shaken up in so many of these areas. And it wasn't just the dystopian turn, it's like, we have to ask these critical questions and also push back and reminded that there's also going to be perspectives and people at the center of these things. And I love that this idea of empathy and care. And the right to refuse came up towards the end, because I think that's we're gonna go forward and lead, it's not going to be a set of tools, or maybe even the way we do the things, it's going to be the values and the core. So what is going to drive where higher ed goes, and teaching and learning exists, and how some of these entities and mediums and platforms come into our worlds like it's going to lead with the people on the values first. So that was kind of nice. I also learned but you should always do a podcast for the book because there's an end Then you're done the project and happy project managers like Clint and I are like, dusted off, away, you go into the world.
20:08
We're drawn to projects and projects haven't dates, right?
20:11
Exactly. What's on the next? What's on the horizon? For us, Clint, what are we gonna do with our free time? We're not editing.
20:20
I don't know. But you know, this is really wet my whistle again, for doing audio, I mean, which is, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to pick it up too, is like I, you know, I had radio as a career, but then I kind of left it for a long time. And, you know, the whole podcast resurgence came by, and I haven't had many people come to me and say, Are you gonna do a podcast, you're gonna, you know, my background, I'm like, Nah, you know, didn't want. And then I did this project. And I'm like, I think I really like to do this. And so, you know, I'm percolating, what the next project might be. And you and I were talking before we hit the record button around different styles of podcasts. And there's something that appeals to me around the documentary form, as opposed to just the interview format. And, and so I don't know, I'm, I'm kicking around this. And, you know, there's some talk in my community around, we were always talking about ethics, and educational technology, ethics, and these issues are starting to, to, you know, come to the fore, I don't know where this is gonna go. But I kind of had the idea that I want to do something else in audio again. So this may not be my last audio project.
21:29
I like that. Clint, I'm glad that this has sparked that for you. Because you have a good voice. We have voices and faces for radio. And no, I will say, I think it's been interesting. I have a podcast problem. So I don't have that. But it's been enjoyable to work with new people like you and Martin, and folks have come on to have a conversation. And yeah, we're both big fans of Clinton, I learned we're both fans of Sonic floater. And just, I'd love to be not a voice but maybe bringing voice to others. So I'm thinking about ways I could, in other podcasts I have amplify that cut my voice out a bit more or think about other soundscapes and maybe some journeys people are on how to showcase on an audio. So it's reminding me that there's a really good time to shut up and let other people talk. And also maybe some different formats, because interviewing and having conversations is fine. But I'd be intrigued like what draws me in as a listener? And what would I want to stop by for like, a quick 1015 minutes is what I'm thinking about these days. So my horizon is Martin thinks we're gonna do another podcast for him. By the way. What do you think of that?
22:40
He's got a new book coming out. I know, there's like a book about metaphors. So
22:44
only if I can do like, some sort of soundscape II thing that's not this, like, that's not talk talk. And then I'm in. So if we could do like a metaphor on the metaphors, and I meant that's it.
22:58
No voices, we'll do a metaphor. We'll do a show about metaphors using audio metaphors for the book. Man, people, I just have to guess.
23:06
Exactly. I'm in and it'll be like little soundscape clips, and maybe we'll have like a little voiceover. In the meditative style. It'd be like the calm or headspace app, but related to whatever the book is.
23:18
Knowing Martin's love for Jaws, I'm sure we'll be having a dinner somewhere,
23:28
we're gonna have to go to like the public domain and see what's available before we'd like to plan this one first, that will take more planning. Well, I just want to thank you for getting this started, clench your It all started with asking about audio book recordings. And I really appreciate you kind of taking the lead to wrangle the community and put out the organization and scaffolding around this project. Sorry, Jesse for we did use the word scaffolding. And also I want you to like think that you kind of inspired other people to think about how to use these open artifacts, like an open book, in a new way and bringing voices literally to this project has been really cool.
24:09
Well, thanks, Laura. And, you know, obviously, so fantastic to have you come on board and jump at the opportunity to take this even further than what I had envisioned in the first place and to put all the extra work in to to wrangle all the guests and do all the editing and put that together week after week after week. That's a lot of work. And I really appreciate it. And I think you've, you know, turn this project into something that is obviously way more than what I ever envisioned. So thank you for that.
24:37
Hey, give us Google Docs, give us some like zoom rooms and you don't know what will happen to this community as what I said. So um, well, I
24:45
think you should also say, a big thank you to all of the people who read chapters, you've guessed it on all of the shows who provided their time and their opinions and their their voices to make this project happen. I really could not have done it. without, without the work of the community, so thank you.
25:03
Absolutely. And Martin, quote unquote executive producers when he dubbed themselves once a few weeks ago, Martin, we thank you for just your graciousness and generosity and letting us like experiment in the sandbox with a new kind of re mixing of openness and showcasing what a book club quote unquote could be to hearing people read your chapter. I think it's been kind of fun to listen to those on the weekly and what will people do with their time clients, they're just gonna miss us and so who knows?
25:35
I have two more. Thank you. So I want to also want to mention the open etc. In BC for hosting the website for us. Thank you very much for for doing that. And to to Karen wise link at AU press. Athabasca University Press. They were the publishers of the book. And when I approached them about the projects, they were very supportive and have provided lots of support and resources. And you can not only find the book on the 25 years.open.ca website hosted by the open etc. But they also have copies of all of the audio content on Martin's electronic version of the book at the AU press site. And so thank you very much to Athabasca University Press.
26:18
I love it cleans made this feel like we're in a mini award show. That's great. All right, cue the show music. We thank you dear listeners for loving us liking us following subscribing and commenting in different forms and formats. We are still leaving the airwaves open. So if you'd like to record something I'm going to give it to, I'll say may 15. If you want to do a shout out a thank you. I still haven't gotten any audio clips, but we put a link and we will continue to put a link in the show notes where you could send us your own reflection what you've learned, comment, ask questions. And if we get some things, I'll do a mash up. Happy to edit that one and share with the community. But thanks for listening, everyone. We really appreciate it.
27:02
Thanks.
27:03
And now the final last word from the author himself. Dr. Martin Weller,
27:08
I should just say thanks a massive thanks to Clint who got this idea originally, of doing an audio book around my my book, and then law firm decided to do a podcast and both of them for organizing all the peoples Come on do it. And all they put into getting those audio files out every week. It's been an amazing project. Really, I think I think particularly given the last year we've had which has been a bit crap most of the time, I think spear will kind of fun thing to be involved with and it will sort of sense of our community project. And I said in our OERx21 presentation that I see of course being based around there. So there's tons of resources there as well as the book, the audio book, the podcast and the way that we really dive into subjects and laws also clip together resources around each the podcast, which would be a good kind of reading there. So I think it's got a really interesting collection of a kind of oral history, if you like of the past 25 odd years, and also people thinking very deeply about where it's going next. So thanks everyone who was involved in the project, particularly thanks to Laura and Clint.
28:14
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 ed tech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca