I don’t know how I found out about this event, but it was very good! It was a talk by Louise Drumm (Edinburgh Napier), facilitated by John Brindle (Lancaster), examining some of the issues that arise in the intersection between digital technology and educational research. Among the points discussed were how the former is a fast moving, external, source of pressure and change, swimming in venture capital cash, while the latter is often slow, ponderous, and impoverished. Louise talked about agency, and how we, as learning technologists and educators, are expected to be users, often knowledgeable and enthusiastic ones, of technologies and practices regardless of how we may feel about them personally.
Louise created a Miro board for the session in which she had created a timeline of digital technology innovations and events which have emerged throughout her career, grouped into different phases. She opened the board up to the group for us to collaboratively edit, move, change, and add new items, which was chaos, but good, creative chaos! Which was a theme of her talk and of her research practice. Creativity that is, not chaos. Just to be clear.