Periodic Fable

I was much encouraged to read Ian Wilson’s admission that so far as learning technology goes, after the pandemic online pivot, he doesn’t want to go “back to normal”  https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2021/04/i-dont-want-to-go-back-to-normal/

I really like his analogy of entering the pandemic as “a well-established caterpillar, familiar with ourselves and our practices. But very soon, we will be emerging in a pandemic free world. But what will we emerge as? The normal pre-pandemic caterpillar or the transformed butterfly of the new normal?“

The “new normal” is another cliche now, but I really feel that we have crossed many boundaries that would otherwise have taken many years. Staff have become much more familiar with using online learning environments such as Moodle and synchronous technologies such as MS Teams. It’s much easier to teach literature if everyone has already learned to read, and now we, as learning technologists, can talk about good practice in technology-enhanced learning with everyone starting from at least the digital equivalent of being able to read. Hopefully it’s no longer so scary.

There are so many newly evolved butterflies out there that we can now start to help spread their wings ?