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H818: Activity 1.2 Open Learning is with us

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 May 2014, 11:24

I'll reflect on and absorb the H818 academic stuff in due course - somewhere in the reading a couple of authors were mentioned so while the pressure is low I've been reading Lawrence Lessig 'Remix' and re-reading, possibly for the third time, Martin Weller's 'The Digital Scholar'.

Open Learning is with us.

Whilst more people globally will get a slice of the tertiary education pizza, there will still be those that who are stuck on the edge with the crust while the 'privileged' few get the real substance. This applies between 'first' and 'third' worlds, but also locally in an education catchment area - when it comes to the democratization of education through e-learning some are more equal than others through having the kit, accessibility, inclination, support and opportunity.

Speaking with a school friend I'd not spoken to since we were 10 or 11 we got onto those OU broadcasts in the middle of the night, and then the BBC 'Trade Test Transmissions' - how else could we possibly know anything about how the stain glass windows were made for Liverpool Cathedral on how animals were rescued during the flooding of the Zambezi?

Repetition, rich content and a dearth of anything else to watch.

In sharp contrast 'open' today, and TV too means everything and anything. How can anything stand out?

Because the search engines offer it, because of branding and association, through word of mouth through your social and other networks i.e. as a consequence of the nature of your 'connectedness'.

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Design Museum

H810 - Accessibility - Coming Out!

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There has been enough on the radio about people with disabilities struggling for all kinds of reasons to 'come out' that it must be a severe issue inTertiary Edypucation too - where people, clearly those with a hidden disability, go out of their way to deny that they could be at a disadvantage. Wherein lies the problem, better in a socilaized learning context to conform, than standard out or given 'preferential' treatment. The fact is that education was meant for an elite, privileged and powerful few - only now is education becoming 'Open'. Education is power - to be kept from all kinds of people with disabled people just others on a long list of those for whom barriers existed, and have been knocked down in one form and rebuilt in others. An Eton education doesn't close doors does it?
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