Posted 9:57 PM by George Siemens
I had a chance to interview Stephen Downes, senior research officer with the National Research Council of Canada. He has a balanced view of what elearning is and what it's supposed to do - a rare perspective. Usually it's "elearning is the new Utopia" or "elearning sucks".
Quote from the interview: "Learning will become a lot less structured, more open-ended, where the educative process is part of the work, where we don’t have this artificial separation between learning and doing."

Posted 9:36 AM by George Siemens
Humour me, spend a few minutes looking at this: WebCT e-Packs.
Comment: This is your future (or anyone who teaches online, at least). In the next several years, interactive, multi-media content will be available for a wide range of topics. Just like we now select textbooks for a course, we will select e-packs...out of necessity. Current models for moving resources online are not sustainable or practical - too expensive and instructors just don't have the time (for that matter, an educator's schedule (as in it's insanely busy) is the greatest foe to an open, free online environment - instructors abdicate control of content to for profit providers - not because the want to, but because their schedule gives them no other choice. Who can flog their own resources? We need what Stephen Lahanas refers to as a content guild...).

The concept of e-packs is great...and the end result will be better learning for students. Only issue will be the expense attached to it.

Schools get an 'F' in tech use
Quote: "Computers may now be nearly as common as blackboards and lockers in U.S. schools, but they are not meeting the needs of Internet-savvy students, according to a study released Wednesday."

Microsoft Grant...yes, we'll sell our souls...