In their respective writings, Weller (2020) and Watters (2020) present a grim assessment of failures in educational technology, with Weller stating the field is \u201cremarkably poor at recording its own history and reflecting critically on its development\u201d (p. 4). Watters (2020) argues that Silicon Valley\u2019s historical \u201ced-tech amnesia\u201d is central to the belief that all technologies must be innovative and progressive. This adversarial stance seems largely attributed to friction between the world of pure academia and the culture of commercial interests inherent in the startup model, and ultimately to publicly traded companies. Weller (2020) characterizes one historical shift in educational technology as a movement away from an \u201copen, experimental approach toward a \u201cbroadcast, commercial publisher model\u201d (p. 42). Both the academic and commercial pathways value new and original thought, yet their end goals are distinct. Weller (2020) admits that academia operates according to \u201cdifferent demands, timescales, and metrics\u201d (p. 8), contrasting with commercial entities that revolve around profitability and, for those startups that progress to public trading, the creation of shareholder value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Various luminaries from academia have moved into leadership roles at educational technology startups. While the startups aim to leverage their credentials to bolster the credibility of their commercial offerings, it is worth acknowledging that, once repositioned in the corporate sphere, these erstwhile academic leaders, by definition, have a new mandate centred on profit above all else to fulfill their responsibility to investors. There is no absolute requirement that a commercial entity be first in original thought, so long as it is not materially shut out by competitors’ patents. Instead, it is the followers within a given market space who achieve commercial success, relying more heavily on timing than on being first. Conditions change, and good ideas that were not necessarily viable in a previous ecosystem of factors may be ripe for success in a do-over opportunity. Weller (2020) observes that BBS technology required \u201cthe technical and social infrastructure\u201d necessary to remove barriers before it could become mainstream (p. 14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the premise of Weller and Watters falls flat. While they attempt to frame the issue as a failure-avoidance exercise by acknowledging history, their underlying concerns seem more like academic hand-wringing. Watters (2020) invokes the alleged intellectual property theft by Uber engineer Anthony Levandoski and his reasoning that \u201call that matters is tomorrow\u201d as a poster child for Silicon Valley\u2019s historical amnesia, but in doing so, she risks inferring that revisiting an old idea must be associated with ignorance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
References:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech.<\/em> AU Press. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.15215\/aupress\/9781771993050.01<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watters, A. (2020). What happens when ed-tech forgets? Some thoughts on rehabilitating reputations.<\/em> https:\/\/hackeducation.com\/2020\/11\/11\/forgetting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In their respective writings, Weller (2020) and Watters (2020) present a grim assessment of failures in educational technology, with Weller stating the field is \u201cremarkably poor at recording its own history and reflecting critically on its development\u201d (p. 4). Watters… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru332\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}