Scott Wilson's Workblog

12-April-2005

[ Knowledge and learning , ICT and learning ]

Institutions will of course try to incorporate ICT for learning in a way which preserves there status, mission and organisational status. As learning opportunities - or contexts - continue to multiply through learners accessing all kinds of information and knowledge from different sources - one answer is that institutions will just whither and die. I am not sure I am happy with that. there are key issues regarding access to knowledge and learning and institutions have in some ways preserved that notion. A privatized jungle will only benefit the privileged.....

Scott Wilson's Workblog:

Great to see you back in the blogsphere, Scott. I totally agree - but from what direction do we approach changing this paradigm.

"Institutions will of course try to incorporate ICT for learning in a way which preserves there status, mission and organisational status. As learning opportunities - or contexts - continue to multiply through learners accessing all kinds of information and knowledge from different sources - one answer is that institutions will just whither and die. I am not sure I am happy with that. there are key issues regarding access to knowledge and learning and institutions have in some ways preserved that notion. A privatized jungle will only benefit the privileged.....

So..just as we develop visions of what an ICT based learning environment may look like in the future, we need to develop a new idea of what the (networked) institution of teh future might be and of how the education and training systems could be reformed to positively utilise the benefits of ICT.

Extended text for this entry:

"I think one of the reasons why many people find LMSs and VLEs to be somehow a bit disappointing is that, in a sense, a commercial LMS is an attempt to implement some sort of technical innovation without requiring any sort of fundamental change in the process (except in the sense of being more managed and reported-on).

In a sense, an LMS is rather like an e-commerce application that gives you a really lovely template to fill in so that you can print it out and send your order through the post more quickly. Its not about changing the conversation, its about co-opting the tools of change, and adapting them to the organisational context to minimize the amount of painful change."


Graham Attwell; 12-April-2005 20:43:50;