weblogg-ed: The read/write web in the classsroom [misspelling in original] has posted a discussion on Transparency and Education.

I'm a dreamer, I know.

"You have to read some Marx," my friend said. "Don't you know that those in power will let the masses convince themselves that are in control until they become a bit too powerful, at which point they'll step in and shut it down?" (Or something along those lines.)

"So what are you saying?" I asked. "You think if the Web gets too disruptive to education 'they'll' try to censor it?"

His answer was, for all intents, yes, that if things ever got to the point where the status quo was seriously challenged, there would be serious attempts to limit the technology. That people in charge would start saying that education was going in a direction that wasn't healthy for our kids, and that we have to take steps to rein it in.

"Yeah," I said. "But this is different." (Great comeback, I know.)

"But things were 'different' in the 40s and the 60s and the 80s...all these things that were supposed to change education and never did," he said. "How is this different?"

And that is the question, isn't it? And that's what's been on my brain ever since...how do we articulate how this change, this technology, is different? Because it's easier? Cheaper? More global? Democratizing? More connecting and collaborative? All of those?

Brain...hurts. But in a good way.

they raise some interesting issues. How will digital technologies change education? Will it just be the changes in delivery systems that we taking effect around us? Or will there be fundamental changes that force us to look at our roles differently.

It does make the brain hurt but that kind of thinking is important to academia and to survival within it.

Posted by prolurkr at February 16, 2005 08:20 AM

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