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Jon Dron
Cognitive prostheses and the future of the human race
By Jon Dron August 18, 2023 - 6:47pmI have lived in Canada for over 16 years so I was surprised when, a few months ago, a conference-friend whom I had not seen for many years contacted me to ask whereabouts in Malaysia I lived. I believe that they were misremembering a connection...Look what just arrived on my doorstep! #howeducationworks from @au_press is now available in print...
By Jon Dron June 29, 2023 - 1:49pmHard copies and e-book versions of How Education Works are now available, and they are starting to turn up in bookstores. The recommended retail price is CAD$40 but Amazon is selling the Kindle version for a bit less.Here are a few outlets that...A decade of unwriting: the life history of "How Education Works"
By Jon Dron June 24, 2023 - 2:16pmAbout 10 years ago I submitted the first draft of a book called "How Learning Technologies Work" to AU Press. The title was a nod to David Byrne's book, "How Music Works".Can a technology be true?
By Jon Dron March 16, 2023 - 1:27pmDave Cormier is a wonderfully sideways-thinking writer, such as in this recent discussion of the myth of learning styles. Dave's post is not mainly about learning style theories, as such, but the nature and value of myth. As he puts it, myth is "a...Athabasca University's major unions condemn the sacking of Peter Scott. Meanwhile....
By Jon Dron February 10, 2023 - 3:03pmThe undergraduate students union, Canadian Union of Public Employees, and Athabasca University professional and faculty union have now all come out with strongly worded statements protesting the recent firing of Peter Scott and the process used to...Athabasca University bids a deeply reluctant farewell to Peter Scott in the vilest attack yet by...
By Jon Dron February 2, 2023 - 5:02pmYou may have heard that the president of Athabasca University, Peter Scott, was replaced yesterday with Alex Clark, erstwhile Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at AU. This was a complete surprise - no, utter shock - to everyone at AU, from...Two stories about learning to be human from a machine
By Jon Dron January 12, 2023 - 5:22pmI asked ChatGPT to write me a story about a robot teaching children to be human. This is what it came up with...Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a robot named Zephyr. Zephyr was unlike any other robot, as it had been programmed...Some meandering thoughts on 'good' and 'bad' learning
By Jon Dron December 20, 2022 - 7:39pmThere has been an interesting brief discussion on Twitter recently that has hinged around whether and how people are ‘good’ at learning. As Kelly Matthews observes, though, Twitter is not the right place to go into any depth on this, so...Communities we live in and serve: universities and places
By Jon Dron October 6, 2022 - 10:55pmVoluntourism, geoarbitrage, and digital nomadsReasons to be Cheerful is among my first ports of call for news most mornings because I hate to start the day on a negative or banal note. The news is mostly good, but it's never trivial, cute, or...
A beautifully expressed letter about the town of Athabasca, and Athabasca University's place...
By Jon Dron September 1, 2022 - 12:27pmOver the coming days I will be posting some of the comments provided by AU staff in our recent letter to the Albertan minister for advanced education and to our own board of governors. However, I think that this one deserves its own post. It has...Over 150 AU staff signed this letter to the Government of Alberta and AU's Board of Governors
By Jon Dron August 30, 2022 - 10:03pmToday I sent this letter from staff at Athabasca University to the Albertan Advanced Education Minister and Board of Governors of the University, cc'd to various government & opposition politicians in Alberta, and a few selected journalists:I...Three reasons why Athabasca University's leaders must never be made to live in Athabasca
By Jon Dron August 16, 2022 - 2:08pmI've said this before but it needs more emphasis. In the past week or so it has become increasingly clear that the real agenda of the Albertan government is not to forcibly move 500 unwilling AU staff to the town of Athabasca. That's just smoke...We shape our buildings and, afterwards, our buildings shape us: some lessons in how not to build an...
By Jon Dron August 14, 2022 - 1:44pmThis is an analysis of the problems that currently beset Athabasca University and a plea to prevent it but, more generally, it is a discussion of the ways that the decisions we have made affect who we are, and how we develop.Thanks @demetriosnAB for your generous offer. We completely misunderstood that you wanted to help...
By Jon Dron August 8, 2022 - 10:00amDear Demetrios NicolaidesYou say,“I’ve offered to provide any kind of assistance that the university needs. They haven’t asked for any.”This is very kind! I am sorry for all the very, very, very bad thoughts I have been...The limits and limitations of business requirements
By Jon Dron July 28, 2022 - 4:11pmAthabasca University's Digital Governance Committee recently got into a heated debate about whether and why we should support Zoom. It was a classic IT manageability vs user freedom debate and, as is often the way in such things, the suggested...
Weary, old, a little broken, but not letting go of the dream: edtech in the 21st Century
By Jon Dron June 30, 2022 - 10:10pmAnne-Marie Scott joins a long line of weary edtech illuminati who have recently expressed sadness and disillusion about life, the universe, and, in particular, the edtech industry (she has plans to do something about that - good plans - but her...#AthaU22 - may your journey be rich, gentle, and challenging
By Jon Dron June 17, 2022 - 4:21pmIn the convocation prayer offered by Elder Maria Campbell each year for Athabasca University graduands, she asks for blessing that their journeys be "rich, gentle, and challenging". I can't think of a more perfect wish than this. Each word...Informal Learning in Digital Contexts: another chapter by me and @terguy from Springer's...
By Jon Dron April 19, 2022 - 5:15pmThis is the second of two chapters by Terry Anderson and me (the other being on the topic of pedagogical paradigms, that I shared a week or two ago) from Springer's Handbook of Open, Distance, and Digital Education.The 'paradigms' chapter more or...New open access chapter by me and @terguy updating and refining our 'three generations'...
By Jon Dron April 12, 2022 - 11:59amThis is a chapter by me and Terry Anderson for Springer's new Handbook of Open, Distance, and Digital Education that updates and refines our popular but now long-in-the-tooth 'three generations' model of distance learning pedagogy. We have changed...English version of my 2021 paper, "Technology, technique, and culture in educational systems:...
By Jon Dron April 5, 2022 - 11:03amThis is the (near enough final) English version of my journal paper, translated into Chinese by Junhong Xiao and published last year (with a CC licence) in Distance Education in China. (Reference: Dron, Jon (2021). Technology, technique, and...Requiem for an email address
By Jon Dron December 5, 2021 - 11:04amAfter 30 years, some time today, my email address at the University of Brighton will no longer exist. It's like losing a part of me.Nobody has ever learned anything at a distance, and no one ever goes to a distance institution
By Jon Dron December 3, 2021 - 11:42amNobody learns anything online or at a distance. Nothing at all. You are always learning it where you are now. All learning is in-person learning, and it all takes place within a physical environment, part of which (only a part) may include whatever...
Challenges of the Physical: slides from my keynote at XII Conferência Internacional de Tecnologias...
By Jon Dron September 10, 2021 - 11:25amHere are the slides from my opening keynote this morning (Pacific Time) for the XII Conferência Internacional de Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação na Educação in Portugal.The conference theme...
A modest proposal for improving exam invigilation
By Jon Dron July 27, 2021 - 1:34pm Comments (2)There has been a lot of negative reaction of late to virtual proctors of online exams. Perhaps students miss the cheery camaraderie of traditional proctored exams, sitting silently in a sweaty room with pen and paper, doing one of the highest...Why do we work from home but learn remotely?
By Jon Dron June 30, 2021 - 4:05pmI've long been annoyed/puzzled by terms like e-learning, online learning, distance learning, remote learning, and so on, because learning is never remote, electronic, online, or at a distance. It's something we do, in relation to and supported...A few thoughts on learning management systems, and on integrated learning environments and their...
By Jon Dron June 27, 2021 - 1:54pmWhy do we build learning systems like classrooms? It is understandable that, when we teach in person, we have to occupy and make different uses of the same or similar environments like classrooms, labs, workshops, lecture theatres, and offices....The physics of social spaces are not like the physics of physical spaces
By Jon Dron June 19, 2021 - 12:36pmI've recently peripherally participated in an interesting exchange of views on Twitter between Jesse Stommel and Stephen Downes that raises some fascinating issues about the nature of online social spaces. It started with a plea from Jesse:"Dear...Are experienced online teachers best-placed to help in-person teachers cope with suddenly having to...
By Jon Dron March 24, 2021 - 10:38amSome thoughts on helping teachers with emergency online teaching, with the occasional transport metaphor and a brief, incomplete book reviewAsus Flip C234 Chromebook review
By Jon Dron October 27, 2020 - 6:18pmI’ve been thinking for some time that I need to investigate Chromebooks - at least, ever since Chrome OS added the means to run Android and Linux apps alongside Chrome web apps. I decided to get one now because I was going on a camping trip...Evaluating assessment
By Jon Dron August 24, 2020 - 2:03pmA group of us at AU have begun discussions about how we might transform our assessment practices, in the light of the far-reaching and quite inspirational AU Imagine plan and principles.This is an amazing - and rare - opportunity to...
