George Siemens draws an illuminating contrast between what goes on in
most VLEs for example and the way most people interact in web-based
environments. I’m not sure if he’s right that education will or even
should ‘mirror’ the networked world, it’s more likely that educators
will find ways to introduce social or networked elements to courses. I
don’t really believe that HE is ‘broken’, but it certainly has to
change to adapt to the world around us.

Towards the end of the presentation Siemens argues that:

“Current generation of learning tools mirror a priori content and
planned conversations. Next generation tools will mirror the
information,power relationships, and fluid social structure of
networks”.

HE still works very much along the lines of students being told or finding out what the teacher already knows. Assessment requires students to prove that either they

• a. have found this information
• b. can remember it
• c. can apply it
• d. can critique it
• e. any or all of the above.

Is this not enough?