Education technology is rapidly moving, sometimes divisive and always interesting, especially to us working in Higher Education. Every week, we share and comment upon a selection of interesting articles, posts and websites relating to education and technology we stumbled upon during the week. Do comment, recommend and share!

Technology’s culture of misogyny is an education technology issue – Audrey Watters

“It’s an education technology issue, in part, because of the expectations that we all are supposed interact online – for profession, personal, and academic purposes. What does that look like for girls and women? You can’t just tell us to “not read the comments” when the threats against us escalate.”

With the #Gamergate scandal getting increased public attention in Britain, Audrey Watters* summarises the #Gamergate issue and its impact on ed-tech in two of her weekly round ups. Trolling impacts on the safety and dignity of users (particularly female users), not just on gamified educational platforms, but also on discussion forums, comment boards and any other communication platform where harrassment can occur and identity can be compromised. This could be a serious issue for the ed-tech community, one which threatens a key tenet of online education; student engagement. We will explore the topic and its implication for education technology further next week.

Technology is not going to fix our education systems – Dr. Madhav Chavan

Dr. Madhav Chavan notes that while technology and the way we use it is non-linear, our education systems are designed in a linear way. While technology may not be able to “fix” education systems, he argues, it can help us to break free from their constraints – if we are willing to rethink education on a larger scale.

Innovating education through wearable technology  – Brad Spirrison for Huffington Post

5 short, inspiring examples of how wearable technology can innovate and improve education

Competency-based learning: The next revolution in online education? – Michelle Weise for Harvard Business Review

This recent contribution compellingly analyses the weaknesses of MOOCs that merely transfer existing content and course design onto the web. However, the claim that the future of online education lies in short, competency-based courses is perhaps more controversial. After all, existing university courses are often (or should be) designed around specific competences and the “skills needed by employers” referred to are hardly clearly and unambiguously defined.

Technology: Cultural resource or slave for our lifestyle?  – Sally Davies for Financial Times (subscription required)

Timely reflections on the future of technology – could “techno-hippies” make us think about using technology as a tool to improve society?

 

*Audrey Watters will be giving a lecture as part of LTI’s NetworkEd series on February 11, 2015. You can subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter to keep informed about LTI’s events.