How technology is changing higher education

Audrey Watters joins me for episode 18 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to talk about how technology is changing higher education.

Podcast notes

Audrey Watters
on Twitter

• Kassandra in Greek mythology
• Kassandra on Urban Dictionary
• Alan Levine @CogDog
• University of Mary Washington’s Maker Space

The mythology

• Science and technology obsession
• We tend to not look at the past very well, in considering EdTech

The history of teaching machines

• Predates computers
• Patents in late 1800s building devices that would teach people
• Teachers would be freed from lecturing and could be freed up to mentor and support students
• Educational psychology
• BF Skinner perhaps best known inventor of teaching machines

The programable web

Different model. Comes from the web.

Rather than being just the recipients of knowledge, [students] now can be active contributors… building and sharing their own knowledge in a meaningful way. – Audrey Watters

Constructing knowledge and sharing it with a network

Reevaluating what we expect students to know and do

How do we assimilate, how do we process, how do we share knowledge?

Easier to participate as an academic in these new networks

Privacy implications

I know you you are and I saw what you did by Lori Andrews

These digital tools demand our attention in a different way. – Audrey Watters

There is a level of vulnerability that learning always involves, but it does take on a different level when we do it in public. – Audrey Watters

The downside of having all student work live within the LMS

Distractions abound

• Push notifications change what’s being demanded of us
• The Colbert Report
• Walter Mischel talks about his book “The Marshmallow Test”
• Audrey Watters writes about the new Apple Watch

Digital literacy

• Mozilla’s digital literacy project
• University of Mary Washington’s A domain of one’s own
• Video that describes the Domain of One’s Own initiative

Where to get started

• Mozilla’s digital literacy
• Audrey Watter’s EdTech Guide
• For educators
• For technology professionals

Privacy and politics

• More than cheerleading
• Data and privacy
• The women and people of color gap in the EdTech universe

Recommendations

Bonni recommends Aziz Ansari defines feminism on letterman

Audrey recommends Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas by Seymour A. Papert