The ten most annoying phrases in academic technology

Inspired by this article where a bunch of researchers from Oxford identified the ten most annoying phrases currently in the English language I decided to try to make a list of words and phrases that folks in academic technology regularly use but which make my teeth all get up and run around my mouth. Now one might think that given a. the prevalence of jargon in the field and b. the extreme nature of my curmudgeonliness that I would have had an embarrassment of riches and would have many words and phrases from which I could choose. But it turns out that I needed help, and I got that from Colleen Carmean and Alan Wolf.

Here is a list of some of our top annoyances.

1. Tech savvy: This phrase drives me barmy. It is a verbal form of waving one's hands to imply, without any evidence, that students know anything about technology. Particularly annoying given that it is, I believe, derived from the Latin sapere, to be wise, which is very very seldom true. Either about technology or about anything else.
2. Edupunk: Now punk rock as a genre makes sense to me, edupunk not so much. Are you really doing it yourself, really that hard-edged. Really that different from what lots of other people are doing? Yeah I didnt think so.
3. Bandwidth: As in "I don't have enough bandwidth" to take on another project. Unless you're actually talking about mb's and a network.
4. Content expert/subject matter expert: Let's really break education down into a Taylorised, Henry Ford wet dream where some folks spout content and other people do things with it. Because a. that happens and b. its possible and c. its a good idea. Yeah right, drives me daft.
5. Cyberinfrastructure: You could make an argument that it hasn't quite achieved the status of being annoying but it's getting there fast. It's a wonderful word though if you're an administrator because you can combine the perception of being tech savvy (cyber...ooohhh) with the hardcore and expensive and very masculine sounding infrastructure, without actually saying anything. This is not true of everyone who speaks of cyberinfrastructure eg Dan Atkins, but it is true of many, eg me.
6. Adoption curve: This has become so overused it is meaningless, and hence annoying. People use a genuflection toward the faculty adoption curves with early adopters, early majority etc  as a way to ignore the complexity of how technology use varies within the faculty.
7. Learning space: Again this has become so overused that it has lost the meaning it once may have had. Anywhere where people are gathered on a campus is now a "learning space." Which is great in some ways, but what are not learning spaces then. I am also driven bonkers by other over-uses of the word space eg "we are really competitive in the distance education learning space right now." Aaarghh!
8. Webinar: A barabarous neologism. Is the seminar I went to in a conference room a conferar?
9. Edublogger: Always comes out sounding like "edgy blogger." Which we tend not to be, see edupunk.
10. Cycles: When not talking about actual processor cycles. Or things with wheels.

Dishonorable Mentions: Information commons, workstation, digital learner (what, you learn in binary, or on your fingers?), end user, information literacy, sustainability.

There are some words and phrases we do like, though probably not for long.
a. Rocket surgery, as in it's not rocket surgery, and
b. Free range learning, You will have to ask Colleen about that one.

The article on the British list is interesting, mostly the comment section.

Comments

[Janet Clarey]

Guilty. Remorseful. Shame. I dislike http://brandon-hall.com/janetclarey/?p=723

[Jim Julius]

What I'd really like to see is a webinar about the adoption curve, featuring some tech savvy edubloggers who, at the end of the day, consider themselves edupunks. I'd be willing to spend some bandwidth in that learning space! (I truly mean that.)

[Geoff Cain]

I am really glad that "Ednuwave" didn't make your list and that you must recognize the supreme edgy coolness of Ednuwave over Edupunk! That is so Eduriffic!
http://cain.blogspot.com/2008/08/edupunk-is-dead-long-live-ednuwave.html

[Michael Gough]

You could add any term that an instructional/academic technologists might use that later is misused by others (sometimes other technologists!). Because of this misuse, the word becomes undefined so to speak and no one really knows what your talking about when you say it.

[Mark]

Thanks for including #8 (I can't even bring myself to say it). It's almost as bad as the business "leaders" who keep using the phrase "going forward..." ~shudder~

[Colleen]

You're funny when your teeth run all around in your mouth.
I heard 'free range learning' the first time from Adrian Wilson of Microsoft (of all places) and laughed out loud.
Love the idea of wandering freely, learning what I want, when I want or need. And the idea that we're all a bunch of chickens pecking around for tasty learning objects.
(oh, learning objects. does that turn up on the top 20 of your list?)
Colleen

[Account Deleted]

Thanks for the list. "Learning Space" is the one I hate most. I ranted about in my own blog last year http://metamedia.typepad.com/metamedia/2007/03/learning_spaces.html where I said,

" 'Learning Spaces' don't, just like the traditional classroom didn't. And for the same reason: there is only one real learning space: the one between the ears."

Information Commons is another one I detest. We have one of those upstairs in our Library -- oops, I'm sorry, I forgot they recently renamed it The Learning Commons, which is, sadly, even worse!

[Jay Cross]

3.0, digital native. For that matter, how about chucking Learning Management System and eLearning?

I'm not quite ready to dump free-range learner, perhaps because it's one of mine.

Great list.

[Patricia McGee]

Picky, picky, picky, you are illustrating why we folks who work in learning technologies (oops, is that a no-no?) are so often misunderstood or disenfranchised by the language we use... we cannot seem to agree on much and the 'baby' (popular jargon) does get thrown out with the slightly used bathwater. Could we start an initiative that helped us agree on what things exist and what they mean, such as the Definitions Project? http://www.definitionsproject.com/definitions/index.cfm

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[neon swan]

The term cyberinfrastructure is definitely past its sell-by date, but there doesn't seem to be any good, useful, non-buzzword synonym to replace it. I'm just relieved that my current responsibilities don't require me to fling it around with such profligacy anymore.

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