Teaching is what is most at risk. Can a social network - loosely connected, driven by humanistic ideals - serve a similar role to what university classrooms serve today? I hope so, but I don’t think so. At least not with our current mindsets and skillsets. We associate with those who are similar. We do not pursue diversity. In fact, we shy away from it. We surround ourselves with people and ideas that resonate with our own, not with those that cause us stress or internal conflict.
Secondly, until all of society becomes fully networked (not technologically networked, but networked on the principles of flows, connections, feedback), a networked entity always risks being subverted by hierarchy. Today, rightly or wrongly, hierarchy holds power in society.
Lisa M Lane on 04 Dec 10Both Stephens agree that my idea of adoption, which involves revising and remixing, is wrong-headed. Downes writes "Here at OLDaily, I have been 'adopting' open educational resources for ten years, linking to a half dozen or so of them every week day… Who needs the grief [of adapting OER]? We link to them and let learners use them directly." And Carson agrees, "blog-like linking makes sense for OER for a number of reasons." If linking is going to constitute the primary method of adopting OER, every penny spent on the process of openly licensing material for OCW or OER publication has been wasted. I can link to CNN. I can link to the New York Times. I can link to Mashable. I can link to Apple and Microsoft. You don't need openly licensed anything to build a course out of links.
