Variation on a theme.
Will
Richardson takes off from Siemens, telling us that Siemens "encourages
to read with education in mind". Richardson doesn't stick to business but
instead seeks out an example from journalism. He quotes from Jay Rosen in a Washington
Post blog post: Simple example: The Net radically shifts
principles of news distribution as all sites become equidistant from the reader.
... Containers in which news had been packaged broke apart because the Internet
could deliver content without the wrapping.
Richardson then
tries to compare this journalistic example to education: How
about “the Net radically shifts principles of curriculum distribution as
all ideas become equidistant from the learner.” ... And in this way, it
follows that “Containers in which curriculum had been packaged will break apart
because the Internet can deliver it without the wrapping.
Yet
here again, it's far from clear that the lack of need for packaging in the way
we consume our news is analogous to a lack of packaging in curriculum. Certainly
there's a good deal to be said for the easy availability of numerous types of
information, coming from a wide variety of sources. But to a large extent the
"wrapping" on curriculum is what makes it meaningful. Wrapping can hide,
or cover, content, but it also can (and should) give it context, and context is,
again, what education is about.
Go to: What am I supposed to think here?, or
Go to: The greatest invention since sliced bread?,
or
Go to: A magic strand?