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Weinberger presents us with a long, fascinating account of how knowledge itself changes in the age of the Internet

That is, the kind of question whose answer depends on what you, personally, do to make the answer come true.

He explores the merits and demerits of "echo chambers" -- the fact that it's easier to get stuff done if you exclude those who question all of your axioms

The three generations of technology enhanced teaching are cognitive/behaviourist, social constructivist and connectivist.

tools can be used and optimized to enhance the different types of learning that are the focus of distance education theory and practice.

pedagogy and the technology must create an engaging and compelling dance

David warns, we still tend to think of knowledge in the ways we did when books had to sit on a single place on the shelf, when knowledge had a single, possible, right form, rather than multiple forms.

This doesn’t mean there are no facts – but it does mean that people are going to insist on being wrong.”

David is actually quite concerned about difference, and just how much difference we can tolerate and still interact and function.

And one thing I’ve learned is that everything is interesting if looked at at the appropriate level of detail. Now, it used to be that you’d have to seek out places to plunge in over your head. But now, in the age of the Internets, all we have to do is stand still and the flood waters rise over our heads. We usually call this “information overload,” and we’re told to fear it. But I think that’s based on an old idea we need to get rid of. Here’s what I mean. So, you know Flickr, the photo sharing site? If you go there and search for photos tagged “vista,” you’ll get two million photos, more vistas than you could look at if you made it your full time job. If you go to Google and search for apple pie recipes, you’ll get over 1.3 million of them. Want to try them all out to find the best one. Not gonna happen. If you go to Google Images and search for “cute cats,” you’ll get over seven million photos of the most adorable kittens ever, as well as some ads and porn, of course, because Internet. So that’s two million vista photos. 1.3 million apple pie recipes. 7.6 million cute cat photos. We’re constantly warned about information overload, yet we never hear one word single word about the dangers of Vista Overload, Apple Pie Overload, or Cute Kitten overload. How have the media missed these overloads! It’s a scandal!

For example, in the old days if you watched the daily half hour broadcast news or spent twenty minutes with a newspaper, you had done your civic duty: you had kept up with The News. Now we can see before our eyes what an illusion that sense of mastery was. There’s too much happening on our diverse and too-interesting planet to master it, and we can see it all happening within our browsers

t Wikipedia, the articles are often relatively short, but they typically have dozens or even hundreds of links. So rather than trying to get everything about, say, Shakespeare into a couple of thousand words, Wikipedia lets you click on links to other articles about what it mention — to Stratford-on-Avon, or iambic pentameter, or about the history of women in the theater.

A recent study suggests that our modern lifestyles are making us “less intelligent” than our ancestors, at least at a genetic level.

When it takes a mere few seconds to find information about almost any topic, the value of knowledge and expertise is being devalued as information becomes cheaper and more accessible.

Our relationship with and understanding of knowledge and expertise has struggled to keep pace with the rapid democratisation of information.

In 2020, people won’t be talking about online learning as such. It will be so integrated with teaching and learning that it will be like talking today about whether we should use classrooms.

Because academic content is almost all open, free and easily accessible over the Internet, students will not pay tuition fees for content delivery, but for services such as academic guidance and learning support, and these fees will vary depending on the level of service required.

Lastly, and most significantly, the priority for teaching will have changed from information transmission and organization to knowledge management, where students have the responsibility for finding, analyzing, evaluating, sharing and applying knowledge, under the direction of a skilled subject expert. Project-based learning, collaborative learning and situated or experiential learning will become much more widely prevalent. Also many instructors will prefer to use the time they would have spent on a series of  lectures in providing more direct, individual and group learner support, thus bringing them into closer contact with learners.

The limitation of physical classrooms and existing information structures in education play a similar role in delaying innovation as the centralized power source in multi-story buildings did during the adoption of electrical engines.

long timeline of slow change

almost all technological advancements related to information and communication have influenced three dimensions: 1.      Our ability to create and share information and content 2.      Our ability to connect and dialogue with others, a progressive minimization of the tyranny of space and time 3.      Our ability to experience a simulated reality

People will not continue to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what technology allows them to get for free.

Power is shifting away from selective university admissions officers into the hands of educational consumers, who will soon have their choice of attending virtually any university in the world online.

Now anyone in the world with an internet connection can access the kind of high-level teaching and scholarship previously available only to a select group of the best and most privileged students.

Over the years, there has been much discussion of the impact of the internet and new forms of data sourcing and communication for education and the ways in which networked learning breaks down the bounded the institution, classroom, and curriculum.

I was just reviewing GG’s Blog and came across a post where GG posted a  personal teaching philosophy mind map. The philosophy matched very closely with my approach to teaching and also my aims through this course. One aspect of GGs philosophy which I had not really considered in my own context however, was the idea of Life Long learning.

Edit: 17 August – Oops, I just revised my first ‘As teacher’ post and realised I did in fact allude to life long learning as one of my teaching objectives here, although I did not consider the idea in depth at all. I am surprised that this was part of my thinking in week one and that I had forgotten this 2 weeks later. As a student of NGL, this has shown me what an excellent idea blogging is for tracking my learning, and also how valuable it is to be able to reflect and edit/build on previous posts. It has also demonstrated to me what a ‘messy’ pathway my learning follows – a concept which has been identified by Bigum and Rowan (2013) “Learning new material, developing new skills or making new discoveries can be complicated, lengthy