After reading the first third of 25 Years of Ed Tech (Weller, 2020), I was surprised that the web was relevant in education in 1995. Even more shocking was that HTML coding was also emerging at the time. In high school in 2006, I learned to write HTML in Communications Technology class using a web development tool called DreamWeaver. I was surprised when Weller mentioned that the web-publishing tool FrontPage was developed in 1996 and offered templates to build websites. Never mind that I thought DreamWeaver was an advanced digital tool in 2006; there were already tools like this ten years earlier. Weller (2020) states that “the uploading of publications to your own website marked the beginning of consideration about the dissemination of knowledge” (p. 18). This stood out to me because of the WebPress sites we use in the MALAT program to publish our academic blogs. The idea of using a digital platform to share your knowledge and learn from what others share feels like a newer concept for me as a student.
Although e-learning was relevant in education in 1999, it was defined differently then. Initially, the definition widely applied to any use of electronic media in education, but slowly the emphasis was on online delivery (Weller, 2020). Weller explains that most of the criticism of e-learning at he time was due to the belief that face-to-face learning was the only effective method of education. In addition, they stated, “the focus of such criticisms was often on the life of the academic and overlooked the social function of distance, open, and flexible learning options” (Weller, 2020, p. 44). E-learning is so valuable in today’s world due to its flexibility, and is why I can be a graduate student while continuing to work in my career.
References
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01
September 2, 2022 at 7:39 am
I first read about the Web in 1993. It was a tiny little blurb in the “electric word” opening pages of WIRED magazine issue 1.03, about this “hypertext” system being developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. I saw my first web browser – Mosaic – later that year in an interactive multimedia course I was taking in my final year of my undergrad. (CD-ROM-based “multimedia” was all the rage.)
I learned basic HTML by looking at source code. There were literally no courses or programs to learn it at the time. If you wanted to make websites, you had to learn by reverse-engineering what others had done. And then going out on useNET and IRC chat channels to get help or to share what we had learned. The web was instrumental in learning about the web itself. It was very meta.
Pages were SO basic! Just text and images. The first HTML table I ever saw was a programming grid on the Citytv website. I was blown away, and spent hours deconstructing it to figure out how the HTML worked.
Weller’s book is really fascinating for me, because it aligns very closely with my own online presence (either directly, or in parallel). Mapping the ed tech developments onto my own usage and tech growth is really interesting.
Giulia, do you remember the world before the Web?
September 8, 2022 at 10:14 am
Hi Darren,
Since I was born in 91′, I was fairly young when the web became popular. Certainly in the latter half of elementary it became more relevant (in a small way) in my own education. As I am reading Weller’s book, I am surprised that the web has been a part of education since the mid 90’s!
September 4, 2022 at 4:45 pm
Hello Giulia,
I appreciate your summary of interesting themes based on “25 Years of Ed Tech”, and how you relate these themes to your educational journey. For example, you suggest the importance of flexibility. In LNRT 521, the readings included “An analysis of flexible learning and flexibility over the last 40 years of Distance Education” by Veletsianos and Houlden (2019). The authors provided lessons about flexibility based on the history of educational technology.
What is the greatest challenge to incorporating flexibility in your teaching practice? How might you integrate flexibility into your course design?
September 8, 2022 at 10:21 am
Hi Jessica,
This is such a great question and certainly one that I revisit when making adjustments to my curriculum. The greatest challenge I face in incorporating flexibility within my teaching practice is that because students don’t have their own camera and lighting gear, classes need to be in-person. This removes the opportunity for an effective remote learning experience. I do although try to incorporate flexibility within assignments, which allows students to be more creative in their delivery of content.