Much of the material for this module revolves around the concept of self-directed learning taking on a greater role in our education, especially through social and 'connected' learning. It seems to me that many of the people (such as Alec Couros and the authors of the Connected Learning report) are still failing to see one thing.
Self-directed learning will only be of use to those who are already motivated; already resourced and already want to learn. That leaves a huge chunk of people who cannot or do not know how to access this kind of learning. What happens to them?
Perhaps the problem is that evangelists of this shift in the way that people learn simply assume that everybody is like them. They can only see the world through the prism of their own experience. This article explains this feeling much better:
The British Library have released over a million images which are 100% open for use, reuse, remixing and redistribution. It is also an excellent example of crowdsourcing and they are encouraging users to add tags to images so that it becomes easier to search. You can find it here:
Self-directed learning will only be of use to those who are already motivated; already resourced and already want to learn. That leaves a huge chunk of people who cannot or do not know how to access this kind of learning. What happens to them?
Perhaps the problem is that evangelists of this shift in the way that people learn simply assume that everybody is like them. They can only see the world through the prism of their own experience. This article explains this feeling much better:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/ed_tech_promoters_need_to_realize_we_re_not_all_autodidacts.html