These ideas of open-source, social networking, folksonomy, and student-centered learning make me think that the classroom model – both virtual and traditional – are no longer necessary. Perhaps it’s not because we had school campuses and structures that we succeeded in developing relationships with our instructors, other students, and the content, perhaps it’s despite having school campuses and structures these relationships occurred. Are these relationships fundamental, maybe even the most important part of education? If not, then what? If content is no longer king (and of course, like the English, we still give content deferential treatment and have furnished it with some nice palaces), then what rules? Let’s hope we do.
So, anyway, what if we gave each student and each instructor a Moodle shell to do with as she pleases? Rather than a shell-per-class, instructors could create groups within their shell and run all their courses in the same instructor-based site. Students could copy-and-paste resources from instructor sites into their own sites, and even serve as a resource for instructors (if they wanted) on finding resources and using them in an online environment. This is really the portal idea all over again, but we don’t have a portal, and we don’t have an easy way of linking to our database to synchronize user accounts yet. I think it is fundamental to education that the tools we provide students are as inexpensive as possible, since an assumption is that most people don’t have a lot of money (is that right?). This leads to open-source, which also immediately challenges the distinction between producer and consumer, which I think is a healthy thing after having grown up in a consumer-culture.
Hmmmm.
