‘You be the disrupter, not the disrupted” — cautions a new whitepaper targeted to individuals, professors, universities and others in and around higher education who are directly involved in the online classes and training realm. “If education is the most important component of society, then it is only right for educators to claim their share of the revenue,” according to Karl Mehta, Founder and CEO of EdCast, a Mountain View, Calif.-based personal learning network company that underwrote the paper. “Think long and hard before you mortgage your future to the outsourced third parties and MOOCs of the world,” Mehta warns. The paper expands on how it is possible to to create open access to high quality education with radical affordability through a specialized learning ecosystem. With online (and continuing) education in dire need of improvement, the paper shows how interoperability and collaboration is key to bringing about the next stage in its evolution. Produced by EdTech Digest Education Research division, download the full white paper here.
I’m interested to read the whitepaper, but from your blurb, it sounds a lot like the party line of a silicon valley product person. I don’t believe education is a product, but rather a service. Case in point — what does “be disrupted” mean in this context? Students are suddenly going to educate themselves? Or universities are going to go all MOOC (probably not)? More likely, especially at first, they’re not going to be able to reach the new classes of students. That’s the danger for them, that they won’t be able to connect as well, and therefore motivate, students who can be so different from them. That’s where the new tools come in, IMHO.
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