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25 Years of Ed Tech, by Martin Weller (2020), AU Press, Athabasca University, https://doi.org/ 10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01
In this 25-chapter book, Martin Weller explains the history of educational technology (ed tech), when technologies arrived on the scene, and why they are essential. Weller is the director of Open Education Research Hub and director of Go-GN network, and he is affiliated with the Institute of Educational technology at the Open University. He refers to his story as the amnesia of ed tech. Professionals in the ed tech world have felt this pull to embrace any technology introduced, whether appropriate or not. This is a great reminder of Richard Clark s mere vehicles analogy where the vehicle has no significant influence over the groceries being delivered (Clark, 2012). The amnesia of ed tech analogy reminds us that not all technology is effective or perfect in every situation.
The book is divided into 25 chapters, starting with bulletin board systems and ending with the conclusion of how to reclaim ed tech. This book review, with the numerous technologies, chapters, successes, and failures, is divided into increments of five chapters per paragraph. The first five chapters defined bulletin boards, the web, computer-mediated communication, constructivism, and wikis. Bulletin boards were the forerunner to social media and discussion forums and existed at the time of dial up. Prior to our current ways of connecting to the Internet with high speed, dial up was the primary internet connection. This was conducted through a modem connection to a phone line that would dial to be connected to the Internet As a result, they were not the fastest in terms of upload speed. However, bulletin boards provided the first real awareness of education using technology. The second technology was the web, which introduced a plat form to share and teach through LMS (learning management system), OER (open educational resource), or MOOCs (massive online open courses). Computer-mediated communication introduced the ability...