Figure 1: Visual reflections on the blogging process using the Visual Thinkery Remixer Machine Storyline by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-by-sa. Remix by Kate Molloy. "Edinburgh application" sat on my to-do list last semester for many months. My collaborator and friend, Clare Thomson, spoke so highly of the course and team, but I had hesitations given how long it had been …
Data and Education
The growing datification of higher education and rampant innovations in AI and machine learning have created a variety of responses across the sector. While these reactions range from fear around the rapid advancements in LLMs, to hope for AI reducing burdensome administrative and assessment tasks, it is worth both senior managers and educators alike adopting …
Educational Closures through an Open Lens
"It is precisely in this way that an uncritical championing of openness fails to adequately analyse educational closures." (Bayne et al. 2015. pp. 247-250) In the forums for this block, Jeremy Knox posed the question: "What do you think Bayne et al. (2015) mean by educational 'closures'? And what has that got to do with …
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Critical Reflections on Digital Literacy
While it is certainly promising to see computing well-covered in the national curriculum in the UK, it is unclear how the computing skills covered in the curriculum serve to foster digital literacy, itself being a truly complex concept to unpack. Pangrazio's article quickly outlines the complexities surrounding a more critical digital literacy: Indeed, the multiple …
Quick Reflections on Teacherbot
*Just publishing this quick additional post to keep track of my own thoughts and reflections* With a few of the additional readings in this block focusing on the Teacherbot, I wracked my brain to remember where I first encountered this work. I eventually remembered that Sîan Bayne delivered the keynote talk on Teacherbot during our …
Technology and the Teacher: Two Sides of Techno-Solutionism
Since the launch of Open AI's ChatGPT preview at the end of last year, the discourse has largely focused on its potential use for cheating, automation of simple tasks, and concerns for the future of academic integrity. While there is global disagreement about its potential and potential harms, many educational technology researchers have explored more …
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Technology and Gender
In summary, your technical capital has been acquired through your increasing economic, cultural and social capital – they’re all intertwined aren’t they? I find Halford and Savage (2010) discussion of the feminist critique re technical capital quite interesting too – they say: “…science and technology are produced by, and constitutive of, masculine identities and male …
The Platformisation of Higher Education
The UNCESO report provides an overview of the ed tech market and some general context(for schools, mostly) but I feel that the Analytical Framework of the Platformization of Education and its three scenarios aren't widely applicable in higher education. For instance, the second scenario posits: In platform-systems, we see the birth of a double educational …
Educational Implications and Benefits – A Critical Reflection on the Affordances of H5P
Apologies for the lack of critical reflection in my previous post, one of the issues I have with H5P is that I've more or less been the sole person behind it at the university since 2019. I was responsible for the pilot, procurement, testing, documentation, training, and learning design workshops (ABC). It's all been rattling …
Affordances and H5P
Our Context In 2018 or thereabouts, my manager asked to review some of the short, online lessons from the EduHack project, and after sifting through some of them, I landed on a lesson about creating digital resources using H5P. I became fixated on H5P. At the time, we had just finished leading the All Aboard …