A decade in review...onward to 2020!
I didn't quite expect this, but it seems like everywhere you turn you see "a decade in review" news stories (radio and TV), "the internet" (in general) and blog posts, twitter threads, and Instagram stories (more specifically). I hadn't really thought about doing one of these posts, but what the hay, why not join in? 😜 . The last decade has certainly been eventful. I kicked off the decade by completing my last 2 master's programs, changing jobs (3 departments and 4 titles in the last 10 years), starting to teach, and participating in research.
I absolutely loved Audrey Watter's 100 debacles of Ed-Tech, so I decided to pick a few and structure my post around this since most of these made an impact on my work-life, and some for my leisure. I am not going to pick through every one of those items, but I'll pick a few (and maybe add some of my own).
New Media Consortium (Horizon report #100)
This one was a shocker for me. The way the NMC just ceased to exist was something I'd expect only from a VC-funded start-up. In the last decade, I was able to attend both conferences that were offered in Boston by the NMC. I enjoyed both, and I made quite a few interesting contacts via those conferences. I also used the Horizon Report as something in the courses I teach. Not necessarily as something ultra definitive, but something to hone the critical skills of students in my courses (and have some fun prognosticating). While the Horizon Report has been picked up by Educause there is something distinctly different about the feel of Educause as compared to the NMC. Speaking of conferences that went bust: Campus Technology. I used to attend CampusTech every year. It was held in Boston which made it super convenient, it had exhibition floor passes for free (which also meant that you could just attend the presentations if you snuck in), and they had a pretty liberal press pass policy which allowed me to attend for free as being affiliated with my school's paper, and later the CIEE journal. It was also co-located with AAEEBL which basically meant two conferences for one low price of free (for me). Good times! They will be sorely missed. I did learn a lot (even if you factor in the amount of hype).
Ning (#98)
Ning is something I came across while I was an MEd student in Instructional Design. Ning, along with SocialGO and Elgg are white label social networks which allow anyone to fairly easily build communities. SocialGO was never free (it has a free trial), and Elgg is open source - which while great it does require the user to provide a fair amount of their own IT maintenance. Not being in a position to do that, Ning hit the sweet spot of free basic hosting (up to 200 users for free?) and no server update and maintenance hassles. Using Ning I built two networks, one for my MEd program (UMassID.com), and one for the Applied Linguistics Department (this is before I started working for them). After Ning eliminated their free model I did garner enough support for UMassID for a few years, but each year I felt like I was looking for champions to pay for the $200 annual fee. Most times I was successful, but at some point, I just felt like I didn't want to keep poking the champions for money any longer. We still use Ning for our department's portal, which makes it easy to post information for students, but also keep our alumni in the loop. With all the changes happening in terms of who owns the platform, I fear that I might need to think of migrating at some point in the future. I wonder how successful I would be in convincing my university to adopt Elgg, sort of like AU has with their Landing.
Badges (#86)
Open Badges are something that is was really pumped for. I am not sure I am all that disappointed that they haven't taken off like wildfire. Any long-term change in credentialling does take time to have something accepted and endorsed. As a gamer, I liked badges because they are very much like achievements. You can have smaller achievements to push you along, and you can have larger achievements (or stackable badges) that allow for much more descriptive information about what someone is capable of. Over the last 9 years we've had the Mozilla backpack, Badgr.io, credly, and Purdue's Passport; I am sure that there are more but those are the ones I've dabbled with. Now, what I am disappointed in are two things: (1) everything closing up, and (2) the fragility of badges. Over the past year, Mozilla stepped out of this arena and migrated things to Badgr. Credly is shuttering their free version (which allowed folks to create and distribute their own badges like I did for my classes) and replacing it with a paid version (Acclaim). I was able to download all of my badges from my backpack and upload them to Badgr (which seems to have the capability to freely create badges), but this brings me to the second problem: badge fragility. A number of the badges I've earned over the past 8 years are not importable into my backpack because URLs are no longer accessible (and hence not verifiable). Now, I know that I have those badges, I can post them on this blog or website, but it does pose a problem for the long-term viability of badges. If someone wants to verify my diplomas they can contact the Registrar's office at my university and they can confirm that I've completed certain areas of study. With badges, this is currently an issue.
Google Reader (#54)
**sigh** OK this still stings. Damn you google! Google Reader wasn't just an RSS reader, it was a community. I could subscribe to RSS feeds of my favorite blogs. I could follow people from my contacts, and I could follow other people on Reader. I could upvote RSS posts, and I could share and basically create an RSS feed of my shared items. While I can (and do) use another reader now (Feedly) it's just not the same. I end up sharing stuff I read on Feedly on my twitter accounts, but that ends up seeming like a lot of spam (because I read and share). I feel like this change on the web has also made changes to sites. Whereas in previous years with Reader I could get the entire news post in my feed now most sites give you a meager 3-5 line previous and you have to click to go to the site for the full thing.🙄. There just isn't a satisfactory replacement for Reader. The Old Reader is pretty close in terms of usability but it really lacks the network which made Google reader amazing! Damn you google!
Google Glass (#26)
In this past decade, I started traveling again after (what seemed to be) a long hiatus from such activities. I love traveling. I love seeing new things and experiencing something different. One of my travels brought me to Italy, to Herculaneum and Pompeii. The experience was amazing, and I loved how preserved these cities were. No matter the level of preservation they are still ruined. As I was walking through the streets of these ancient cities I was thinking was an awesome use case for google glass. One could use augmented reality as they walked through the streets to see buildings in their full glory. They could see Romans walking through the street while being busy with day to day life. They could hear the sounds of a dead language being spoken again all around them. Put in some QR codes and some geotagged locations and you've got educational pop-ups! This sounded like a great vision of the future. I was thinking in terms of tourism, but it could easily apply to learning. Sadly this is not the case...
MOOCs (#4)
Well, technically Audrey's #4 is the phrase "year of MOOCs", but I think that items like "promise of free" (#99) and "UC Berkeley Deletes Its Online Lectures" (#67) could fit in here. MOOCs may be seen as flops, and perhaps for some things they may be. But, as Siemens recently wrote in a twitter thread, MOOCs aren't out yet (OK, paraphrasing here). Just because we (in North America) are "done" with them, it doesn't mean that others are done with them. They may make a monumental comeback depending on who they evolve outside of our continent. I still think there is a lot of promise for MOOCs (and I look forward to the regenesis of the cMOOC), but there are attributes of xMOOCs that really have bugged me over the past few years. When there were only one or two MOOCs happening at a time, it was perfectly manageable for me (as a learner) to jump in and participate. When options for providers and topics exploded, it became hard. I chose which MOOCs to attend in real-time, and which ones to do as a self-paced learner. Well, it seems like self-paced is not really much of an option the way that things have evolved in the xMOOC world any longer. Once the course is over, unless you've paid for it, it becomes locked and unavailable. xMOOCs have embraced a freemium model that takes away agency on the part of learners. Now, I hope MOOCs survive because they are a part of my own balanced learning diet, but I do hope that providers and designers keep tweaking the recipe. The freemium model doesn't really work all that well for things that you aren't credentialing people for. Maybe in the coming decade, we'll see a resurgence of the cMOOC 😀.
I don't want to close out the blog post with only negatives, so I think I should mention some positives. This past decade was about networks! Through networks, I "met" a lot of interesting and intelligent people who have positively impacted my life. These are people I've learned within MOOCs. These are people with whom I've conducted research. These are people with whom I've virtually connected (and in some cases even met face to face!). These are people on twitter chats, on DMs, and at conferences. And also people in my doctoral cohort(s). Even though technology might not always work for us, the people involved have made the last decade on the web a supportive learning environment for me, so thank you all for the MOOCs, the mLearning, the Rhizos, the lurking, the critical ID, the book and article recommendations, the conference crashing (like wedding crashers, but for conferences), the dissertation encouragement, and so much more! I hope the learning continues in the decades to come 😎
I absolutely loved Audrey Watter's 100 debacles of Ed-Tech, so I decided to pick a few and structure my post around this since most of these made an impact on my work-life, and some for my leisure. I am not going to pick through every one of those items, but I'll pick a few (and maybe add some of my own).
New Media Consortium (Horizon report #100)
This one was a shocker for me. The way the NMC just ceased to exist was something I'd expect only from a VC-funded start-up. In the last decade, I was able to attend both conferences that were offered in Boston by the NMC. I enjoyed both, and I made quite a few interesting contacts via those conferences. I also used the Horizon Report as something in the courses I teach. Not necessarily as something ultra definitive, but something to hone the critical skills of students in my courses (and have some fun prognosticating). While the Horizon Report has been picked up by Educause there is something distinctly different about the feel of Educause as compared to the NMC. Speaking of conferences that went bust: Campus Technology. I used to attend CampusTech every year. It was held in Boston which made it super convenient, it had exhibition floor passes for free (which also meant that you could just attend the presentations if you snuck in), and they had a pretty liberal press pass policy which allowed me to attend for free as being affiliated with my school's paper, and later the CIEE journal. It was also co-located with AAEEBL which basically meant two conferences for one low price of free (for me). Good times! They will be sorely missed. I did learn a lot (even if you factor in the amount of hype).
Ning (#98)
Ning is something I came across while I was an MEd student in Instructional Design. Ning, along with SocialGO and Elgg are white label social networks which allow anyone to fairly easily build communities. SocialGO was never free (it has a free trial), and Elgg is open source - which while great it does require the user to provide a fair amount of their own IT maintenance. Not being in a position to do that, Ning hit the sweet spot of free basic hosting (up to 200 users for free?) and no server update and maintenance hassles. Using Ning I built two networks, one for my MEd program (UMassID.com), and one for the Applied Linguistics Department (this is before I started working for them). After Ning eliminated their free model I did garner enough support for UMassID for a few years, but each year I felt like I was looking for champions to pay for the $200 annual fee. Most times I was successful, but at some point, I just felt like I didn't want to keep poking the champions for money any longer. We still use Ning for our department's portal, which makes it easy to post information for students, but also keep our alumni in the loop. With all the changes happening in terms of who owns the platform, I fear that I might need to think of migrating at some point in the future. I wonder how successful I would be in convincing my university to adopt Elgg, sort of like AU has with their Landing.
Badges (#86)
Open Badges are something that is was really pumped for. I am not sure I am all that disappointed that they haven't taken off like wildfire. Any long-term change in credentialling does take time to have something accepted and endorsed. As a gamer, I liked badges because they are very much like achievements. You can have smaller achievements to push you along, and you can have larger achievements (or stackable badges) that allow for much more descriptive information about what someone is capable of. Over the last 9 years we've had the Mozilla backpack, Badgr.io, credly, and Purdue's Passport; I am sure that there are more but those are the ones I've dabbled with. Now, what I am disappointed in are two things: (1) everything closing up, and (2) the fragility of badges. Over the past year, Mozilla stepped out of this arena and migrated things to Badgr. Credly is shuttering their free version (which allowed folks to create and distribute their own badges like I did for my classes) and replacing it with a paid version (Acclaim). I was able to download all of my badges from my backpack and upload them to Badgr (which seems to have the capability to freely create badges), but this brings me to the second problem: badge fragility. A number of the badges I've earned over the past 8 years are not importable into my backpack because URLs are no longer accessible (and hence not verifiable). Now, I know that I have those badges, I can post them on this blog or website, but it does pose a problem for the long-term viability of badges. If someone wants to verify my diplomas they can contact the Registrar's office at my university and they can confirm that I've completed certain areas of study. With badges, this is currently an issue.
Google Reader (#54)
**sigh** OK this still stings. Damn you google! Google Reader wasn't just an RSS reader, it was a community. I could subscribe to RSS feeds of my favorite blogs. I could follow people from my contacts, and I could follow other people on Reader. I could upvote RSS posts, and I could share and basically create an RSS feed of my shared items. While I can (and do) use another reader now (Feedly) it's just not the same. I end up sharing stuff I read on Feedly on my twitter accounts, but that ends up seeming like a lot of spam (because I read and share). I feel like this change on the web has also made changes to sites. Whereas in previous years with Reader I could get the entire news post in my feed now most sites give you a meager 3-5 line previous and you have to click to go to the site for the full thing.🙄. There just isn't a satisfactory replacement for Reader. The Old Reader is pretty close in terms of usability but it really lacks the network which made Google reader amazing! Damn you google!
Google Glass (#26)
In this past decade, I started traveling again after (what seemed to be) a long hiatus from such activities. I love traveling. I love seeing new things and experiencing something different. One of my travels brought me to Italy, to Herculaneum and Pompeii. The experience was amazing, and I loved how preserved these cities were. No matter the level of preservation they are still ruined. As I was walking through the streets of these ancient cities I was thinking was an awesome use case for google glass. One could use augmented reality as they walked through the streets to see buildings in their full glory. They could see Romans walking through the street while being busy with day to day life. They could hear the sounds of a dead language being spoken again all around them. Put in some QR codes and some geotagged locations and you've got educational pop-ups! This sounded like a great vision of the future. I was thinking in terms of tourism, but it could easily apply to learning. Sadly this is not the case...
MOOCs (#4)
Well, technically Audrey's #4 is the phrase "year of MOOCs", but I think that items like "promise of free" (#99) and "UC Berkeley Deletes Its Online Lectures" (#67) could fit in here. MOOCs may be seen as flops, and perhaps for some things they may be. But, as Siemens recently wrote in a twitter thread, MOOCs aren't out yet (OK, paraphrasing here). Just because we (in North America) are "done" with them, it doesn't mean that others are done with them. They may make a monumental comeback depending on who they evolve outside of our continent. I still think there is a lot of promise for MOOCs (and I look forward to the regenesis of the cMOOC), but there are attributes of xMOOCs that really have bugged me over the past few years. When there were only one or two MOOCs happening at a time, it was perfectly manageable for me (as a learner) to jump in and participate. When options for providers and topics exploded, it became hard. I chose which MOOCs to attend in real-time, and which ones to do as a self-paced learner. Well, it seems like self-paced is not really much of an option the way that things have evolved in the xMOOC world any longer. Once the course is over, unless you've paid for it, it becomes locked and unavailable. xMOOCs have embraced a freemium model that takes away agency on the part of learners. Now, I hope MOOCs survive because they are a part of my own balanced learning diet, but I do hope that providers and designers keep tweaking the recipe. The freemium model doesn't really work all that well for things that you aren't credentialing people for. Maybe in the coming decade, we'll see a resurgence of the cMOOC 😀.
I don't want to close out the blog post with only negatives, so I think I should mention some positives. This past decade was about networks! Through networks, I "met" a lot of interesting and intelligent people who have positively impacted my life. These are people I've learned within MOOCs. These are people with whom I've conducted research. These are people with whom I've virtually connected (and in some cases even met face to face!). These are people on twitter chats, on DMs, and at conferences. And also people in my doctoral cohort(s). Even though technology might not always work for us, the people involved have made the last decade on the web a supportive learning environment for me, so thank you all for the MOOCs, the mLearning, the Rhizos, the lurking, the critical ID, the book and article recommendations, the conference crashing (like wedding crashers, but for conferences), the dissertation encouragement, and so much more! I hope the learning continues in the decades to come 😎
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