With technology spreading into every facet of our lives we must consider all the aspects that are changing. We can now take e-mail with us wherever we go, with the BlackBerry type of products. We now have music we can take everywhere thanks to the iPod line of products. We now can take 1500 books with us at all times with the portable Kindle, with allows downloading hundreds of thousands more. We are now able to connect to everyone in the world, at all times. We are entering the connectivism era.
Nicholas Carr, speaker and former editor of Harvard Business Review, proposes that we are simply exchanging the physical clutter of books for the mental
clutter of the web. He also seems to imply that technology is making people increasingly
stupid. However, this is open for debate, Nicholas Carr is currently in the process of writing a book addressing this issue. There are attempts to reach a
systemic understanding of the impact of the technological changes on the educational system. George Siemens, Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, suggests that the ability to continue to learn and develop new knowledge replaces the importance of existing knowledge, or, what is known today is less important than the capacity to continue to know more. I agree with this idea, the ability to perpetually learn is a necessity in today's world. The technology in and of itself is not bad, nor does it make us stupid, but it is the main factor of why perpetual education has become so important.
After all, in 1940 the doubling rate of information was roughly 20 years, by 1970s it was roughly seven years, in 2007 doubling occurs every 1-2 years. By 2020, the amount of knowledge is expected to double every
72 hours according the
American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). Some are becoming addicts to the perpetual flow of new information, myself included. If you are like this, one place you want to check out would be MIT. They have come up with another revolutionary idea, no surprise. They now offer
MIT Open Course Ware which provides access to over 1800 courses enabling individuals access to lecture notes, exams, and videos. There is no accreditation, access to professors, or diplomas are provided. If it's knowledge you seek, this is a great resource!
One may ask, what good is learning something, if you can't prove that you know it? Well,
Athabasca University*, a Canadian not-for-profit University is offering online classes for out of country residents for around $200 per credit. This price is competitive with in-state college tuition prices.
Open University out of the UK is doing virtually the same thing, but currently are for only UK or Ireland residents.
As with the ever growing ubiquity of technology and information, it is very important for public institutions to take note of this, because there will be many more to follow, and the price isn't going up. After all,
$0.00 is the future of business. *Athabasca is accredited with the Government of Alberta and in 2006, AU became the first Canadian public university to receive accreditation in the United States, through the
Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), one of six regional organizations in the U.S. that accredits universities.
