“25 Years of EdTech: The Serialized Audio Version” is an adaptation of Martin Weller’s “25 Years of EdTech” book into a community audiobook, published in podcast form. Each chapter of the book has been read by a different member of the open education community and was released on a weekly schedule between November 2020 and May 2021. The original 25 Years of EdTech is published by AUPress under an open license.
This project is an outstanding example of the power of OER reuse for the following reasons.
- Remixing the physical book into an audiobook has increased accessibility by providing the text in an alternate format.
- Drawing together the open education community around the reading of the text sparked the companion “Between the Chapters” podcast, providing a deeper dive and critical analysis by experts into the topic of each chapter. This has added an additional layer of richness to the original book.
- The weekly podcast release schedule, and accompanying critical analysis created a fundamentally new way to experience the book – slower and in bitesize chunks.
- Each episode of the main recording or the companion podcast also now exists as an OER available for future use / reuse.
The podcast is also hosted on open infrastructure in BC, Canada and syndicated onto all major podcast platforms for discoverability. AUPress host their books on the Manifold open publishing system, and have also linked to the audiobook version. The main podcast is produced by Clint Lalonde and the Between the Chapters podcast is produced by Laura Pasquini.
