Horizon Report!

I chose to read the Technologies to Watch chapter of the Horizon Report. It gave a brief description of several forms of technology, how they are currently being utilized, and what the future holds for them. The two most interesting points brought up are the ways that electronic books will be able to reduce costs while reducing the campuses carbon footprint and the potential for lowering the cost of education, both through electronic books and open content. Electronic books allow the cost of production to be greatly decreased and input materials almost eliminated, however it has yet to be told if major textbook producers will allow this transition to occur. Textbook manufacturers have a lot to lose, as soon as their books are in the digital format they are easily duplicated creating the same issue the record industry now faces. The textbook industry has a prime corner on its market and its hard to see them willingly given any of that market control up.

Open content is really amazing; it goes against every capitalistic structure our society has created. Here you have some of the world’s finest Universities sharing course content online for free. Yale hosts videotaped lectures on its website with free access for anyone with an Internet connection. This eliminates the cost of education especially for those only looking to casually take courses or learn material for their own benefit. However, Yale knows that no matter how much you know you can’t do anything in our country unless you have a degree that says you know the material. This fact alone undermines the value of open content but it is still extremely useful and beneficial to society as a whole.

All of these technologies allow us to have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but we must be sure to allow ourselves to actually learn material before moving on to the next thing, something I find myself struggling with constantly. Too often we welcome this inundation of media without considering the consequences of being continuously surrounded by information.

Industrial application to almost everything.

Ok, so Sir Ken Robinson said that we need to change this industrial model to that of an agricultural model. This is easier said than done, the industrial model has infected almost every facet of our lives and society including the most organic, agriculture. So what he is asking for isn't just an overhaul of school systems, its the complete overthrow of how our society approaches everything. Daniel Pink, then displayed how we are not motivated by money when it comes to higher learning activities (unless we are engineers, greedy bastards) this is antithetical to the entire system upon which our society is based, throw money at a problem and it will be fixed. Creativity is not something that can be bought, as much as our capitalistic culture trys to quantify and montify art, music, and culture it will never be sucessful. Creators are self motivated, when I write a song I clearly am not thinking I am going to make a million dollars from it, I do it cause it is my passion, no amount of money will make me produce a better song. We have to learn to leave business models to businesses and operate our schools and creative expression independantly and free from our corporate greed or you'll end up will thousands of Hannah Montana's, and dear god who wants that.

Hello

This is very interesting what we are learning in our class today, it seems that we need to change the way our schools are run. Who knew! The most interesting part was when Sir Ken Robinson related changing the industrial model of education model to an agricultural model, but what do we do now after or society has applied an industrial model to agriculture. Both these videos were very interesting, I am very tired today, I had to work till two last night, I want some sympathy! 

Whats going onnnnnnnn

I am a student in the MAT program at The University of Maine, I created this blog for a class, we will see how this goes.

-Mike