There are a number of things that have stood out to me in reading Weller’s 25 years of Ed Tech.  The first is that he felt it necessary to point out that he may have taken some liberties with the timeline, as if somehow his analysis is rendered less valid because he got a year or sequence wrong.  That being said, it is interesting that he chose to start with message boards, and not the web or any software that came prior. 

I’ve long ago learned about HTTP and URLs but had never considered the design of the web as a networked system before.  So in reading Weller’s description of a robust, decentralized, and open system, my mind immediately went to bitcoin.  The biggest Eureka! moment for me was the realization that these two technologies share the same design principles: that they are open and available for anyone to participate; that they are decentralized, running through numerous  nodes and not owned or controlled by any one entity; and that they are robust and designed to survive attack.  I don’t think those are coincidences but rather a lesson for me that demonstrates the depth and importance of design.  

Another lesson in design was the chapter on wikis.  It’s interesting how the culture of openness led to the design of a system that’s not particularly revolutionary in its technical elements, but has become the oracle for truth online.  I’ve yet to participate in creating or editing a wiki but I’m eager to learn more.

Finally, the most contentious chapter was the one on e-learning.  Because of where it’s situated on the timeline, it wasn’t ready for primetime and e-learning gets subjugated as a brand, the e-commerce of education in the midst of a dotcom boom.  Today, e-learning theory espouses many of the same principles found in other works towards a unifying theory of online education.  Let the ivory towers debate about whether face-to-face is as good as it gets til the end of time, the reality is that it’s entirely situational and that most learning environments exist outside of lecture halls.