I've been in the process of migrating a Technology Enhanced Learning site to a more general Learning and Teaching enhancement site and wondered whether what's below should go on the new site?
It's designed to go against the fahionista element in learning technology, where learning technologists rush from one new technology to the next and where, if you are still using what they have just left, you are told, "Oh, that's so last year?"
"Facebook that's rubbish we all use Twitter now." "Twitter? We're all on Grunter darling!"
Something similar is raised in this interesting post from the Ed Techie Thanks to @MrSimonWood for the link.The same people who were shouting about ePortfolios have now moved elsewhere. Always promoting the next thing in the same way they promoted the last big thing they are now dismissing without pausing to examine what they are actually doing. Is is just self-promotion? Is it the result of a JISC project fueled culture? Is it insecurity, thinking that anyone can do this job so I'd better look busy?
Why are learning technologists always trying to sell something? The latest tool they have found or that a salesman has shown them. And why do they think that what works for them (or more often their son, daughter, niece, cat...) should work for everyone else too? Don't get me wrong I think technology can be really tremendously powerful in supporting and enhancing learning and teaching but perhaps learning technologists are the biggest barrier in it's successful adoption.
Anyway on to Learning Technologists Anonymous. The first step. My name is Chris and I'm a Learning Technologist.......
Many men and women have heard or read about the unique Fellowship called Learning Technologists Anonymous since its founding. People who once used learning technology to excess, finally acknowledged that they could not handle learning technology in its current form, and now live a new way of life.
Learning Technologists Anonymous use the following 12 step programme.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the latest learning technology -that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn developing our strategies over to the learning community as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to the learning community and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked the learning community to work with us to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through Appreciative Inquiry to improve our conscious contact with the learning community, to understand their needs and find ways to work together to support those needs.
12. Having had a ‘spiritual awakening’ as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to learning technologists and to practice these principles in all our affairs
