S e b l o g g i n g

On the commoditisation of instruction

With the commoditization of instruction, teachers are drawn into a production process designed for the efficient creation of instructional commodities, and hence become subject to all the pressures that have befallen production workers in other industries undergoing rapid technological transformation from above. In this context faculty have much more in common with the historic plight of other skilled workers than they care to acknowlege. Like these others, their activity is being restructured, via the technology, in order to reduce their autonomy, independence, and control over their work and to place workplace knowledge and control as much as possible into the hands of the administration. As in other in other industries, the technology is being deployed by management primarily to discipline, de-skill, and displace labor.

David F. Noble (1998) in Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education.

On convivial work

The conditions for convivial work are structural arrangements that make possible the just distribution of unprecedented power. A postindustrial society must and can be so constructed that no one person’s ability to express him- or herself in work will require as a condition the enforced labor or the enforced learning or the enforced consumption of another.

Ivan Illich (1975) in Tools for conviviality

Personal Learning Environments: Concept or Technology?

Our paper “Personal Learning Environments: Concept or Technology?” was finally published in the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (IJVPLE).

This paper reviews and critiques how the notion of PLEs has been conceptualised and discussed in literature so far. It interprets the variability of its interpretations and conceptualisations as the expression of a fundamental contradiction between patterns of activity and digital instrumentation in formal education on one hand, and individual experimentation and experience within the digital realm on the other. It is suggested to place this contradiction in the larger socio-historic context of an ongoing media transformation. Thus, the paper argues against the prevalent tendency to base the conceptualisation of PLEs almost exclusively on Web 2.0 technologies that are currently available or emerging, while underlying patterns of control and responsibility often remain untouched. Instead, it proposes to scrutinise these patterns and to focus educational efforts on supporting adult learners to model their learning activities and potential (personal learning) environments while exploring the digital realm.

Reference: Fiedler, S. H. D., & Väljataga, T. (2011). Personal learning environments: Concept or technology? International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2(4), 1-11.

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Tags: personal learning environment, PLE