Thursday, December 31, 2009

Elearning Prediction / Hope 2010 – Next 10 Years

Kia ora tātou – Hello EveryoneFuture City
My prediction and hope for 2010 are tempered by what I learnt and gathered in 2009 and before that. However, my hope does not match my prediction.

I suspect that what I hope happens will not come to pass.


I’ll not dwell on the particular. That is too narrow for the future. Instead, I’ll attempt to look to the bigger picture of where a Nirvana in elearning might lie.

Surmise


Commercialism and consumerism will rise with renewed vigour, despite the recent and global economic collapse that many experts say was brought about through, among other things, flagrant practices of commercialism and consumerism.

Rather than learn from past errors and misguided pathways, society will resume its hazardous journey and continue to career along a wavering and obstacle-strewn path to uncertain success.


Why do I feel this way? There are many reasons. I will cite only one elearning example here.

At the beginning of last decade (2000 – 2003) I watched the rise and fall of what might have been a brilliant concept in learning resource development – that of the learning object.

I may be wrong here – I don’t think I am. But my feeling is that financially pushy commercial factors, far larger than the budgets for learning itself, launched into the sky and eventually nosedived to destruction what could have been a worthwhile elearning concept, in the form of the learning object.


Pandora relic


I have one hope for this year and for the rest of time.

Sheryl McCoy’s recent post, Another Balkanized Technology Rip-Off, puts into words exactly how I feel about the way commercialism and consumerism have continued to hinder the betterment of society.


The drive to sell, through a strategy of planned obsolescence despite genuine need, continues to come in the way of establishing real expertise in the use of technology. It stymies creativity. It comes in the way of progressing to better things, while purporting to advance and progress towards improvement. It wastes time, resources and money.

I have worked through a decade of watching incompatibles, non-connectables, lack of connectivity and even incompatibility between different versions of the same commercial devices/applications/appliances.

I’ve wracked my senses, grappling with upgrades to versions of machines, computers and their applications. All in an attempt to continue to use these for the purposes that I had worked to acquire consummate ease in and reasonable expertise in.


What I discovered was that I was grounded, once again, when the latest version (of whatever) was released. It made me consider seriously and review any further dubious opportunities for ‘upgrading’.

Valuable opportunity

I hope that we can learn from the mistakes of the last decade, and of last century. Let’s not push mistakes into the past as history to be forgotten. Let’s not claim we are assured success by simply ‘moving right along’.

Let’s start putting to good use what can be salvaged in learning from our past mistakes and successes, and move to a richer and prosperous future.



Rangimārie - Peace in Harmony

3 comments:

V Yonkers said...

Interesting is that the openness of the 1990's in the US in which the internet was established by cooperation between education, the government, technology volunteers, and businesses gave way to a closed system driven by short term profits, intellectual property laws, and a corporate culture.

However, there were some beacon's that helped innovation to continue, specifically, the creative commons and open source movement. Until we change intellectual property laws that constrict innovation and creates information hoarders, I think your prediction will come true.

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

Kia ora Virginia!

Yet there is hope!

Indeed, the open source movement is a chink of shining light. Many believe that the so-coined 'Web3.0' will come about through the addressing of genuine openness, where the Internet will be free - free from the shackles of of copyright mania.

But my hope is for a compatibility in all this - a true and proper opportunity for a free-flow of communication and usage.

Catchya later

inchirieri apartamente cluj said...

Learn from mistakes from tha past! This is a great statement. We should learn from the past but we don't. And when I refer to tha past I don't mean past like 1800 but recent past.

I live in a country where political mistakes are made, mistakes that were made by other states and we don't care. The administration does not care and are not interested in what others had been through.