I bookmarked the e-book webpage of "The World Is Flat" (Chinese version) and read the preface. I got back to that after I read the synopsis of Dr. Curt's "The World Is Open". I found the latter one not only covers the influential flattener (Dr. Curt prefers to call it "opener") of globalization-technology-that Thomas Friedman didn't talked about in his best-seller, it also discuss that in a more positive manner. It seems that we suddenly realize how globalized we are until some negative influence like financial storm happens. However, we are never tired or scared of new technology emerging to empower connection and education.
I like the way Dr. Curt interpret WE-ALL-LEARN with the ten openers. That's poetic. I also enjoy the new set of triple P's that describe how technology opens the world for education: "Pages of free web content and courses; pipes for accessing and searching such online content and a participatory learning culture that freely shares and collaborates on the information and knowledge found there.
In the introduction part of "The World Is Open", Dr. Curt tell a long digging story to show how blog enable us to be free to choose to be an arm-chaired archeologist, an observer of those who dig in the real-world. It also shows how powerful blog is to connect people of the same interest to communicate despite of the limitation of time and space. Daily life, information and knowledge have never been shared in such a quick manner.
Web lowers the stair of receiving education (both formal and informal ones)-cutting cost, breaking the fences of age and background, etc. Thanks to the Internet, education today is highly open and global.
The web technology intrigues the willingness of sharing and collaborating of educational resources. This notion extends education outside the walled schools onto the virtual worlds where learners meet and interact with instructors and peers, discussing a topic, working together on a project, figuring out a solution, etc.
The Web technology is the modern Magellan who explores and opens the world for us so we don't need to travel over the planet but can "see" it much better than any generation before us.
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Internet certainly opened up the door to the future for many, but not for all yet. Now our job is to open that door and help others to enter it.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the tech hurdle. Fortunately this round of innovation often relies on existing hardware and less on having to purchase entire new teaching apparatuses.
ReplyDeleteNow, this doesn't solve the problem of teachers/students who didn't have computers in the first place, but at least there is less of a chance of Wikipedia going the way of a $2000 laserdisc player bought in 1993.