By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
This is the sort of article that you read and reread with a shake of the head in between. In “Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer?” (WCET, 12.7.11), Gary Brown and Trent Batson claim that “the debate between online and traditional courses is over.” After repeated readings, I still find myself nodding in agreement with the conclusion that “almost all” classes include online components but shaking my head at the logical leap that, therefore, the debate is over.
In fact, in the statement that “almost all educational experiences, no matter where they occur, are now online to some degree,” Brown and Batson make a case for omitting the qualifier “almost” since, for all practical purposes, the web is an unavoidable, ubiquitous presence in all our lives. Thus, even when courses appear to be completely traditional with required physical attendance and no onsite web technology, they are still directly or indirectly associated with online learning resources and personal communications such as email. In other words, all courses are blended to some degree even when the online dimensions may not be obvious.
The authors also reiterate some of the main arguments that defend the quality of online practices.
Considering my agreement with their premises, why do I end up questioning their conclusion that the debate is dead? The problem may be in our perceptions of space in the learning environment. Brown and Batson say that “all learning now has become untethered from a single locus” and that “the locus of learning is not bounded by brick or LMS.” They add that, “unlike the traditional versus online debate,” the distinction between tethered and untethered matters.
My point is that an untethered practice (e.g., eportfolios) in a tethered environment (traditional or blended classroom) effectively eliminates the space or anywhere advantage, which distinguishes completely online from blended approaches. That is, even if students are allowed to go online from outside the classroom, they are still required to report to the physical site at other times. In other words, they are not free from space restrictions. In completely online classes, students have no such space restrictions. They can be anywhere. And if we add the time advantage, they can also learn at any time.
This anywhere and anytime advantage changes the student and faculty populations as well as the range of practices in ways that blended approaches cannot match. Put another way, a class that is partially virtual is significantly different from one that is completely virtual. I’m not saying that one is better or worse than the other, but I am saying that they are different, like apples and oranges.
Thus, from my perspective, the traditional versus online and the tethered versus untethered debates both matter. Virtual practices such as eportfolios chained to brick and mortar locations, however long the chain, are still tethered. To accept that this doesn’t matter is to close the door on explorations of learning environments that impose no space or real-time restrictions.
We, educators, have yet to scratch the surface of the potential for completely virtual learning environments, and part of the reason is our reluctance to remove the chains that bind us to our brick and mortar buildings. Exclaiming that adopting virtual practices while remaining chained erases the distinctions between traditional and online is to close our eyes to the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
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Educational Technology and Change Journal 
Great post, Jim! and an excellent topic for discussion.
I have great respect for Gary and Trent’s work. It was Gary’s 1999 co-authored paper on “The Difference Frenzy” (http://technologysource.org/article/difference_frenzy_and_matching_buckshot_with_buckshot/) which inspired me to write about “Escaping the Comparison Trap” (http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol1_issue2/Escaping_the_Comparison_Trap-__Evaluating_Online_Learning_on_Its_Own_Terms.pdf) back in the mid-2000s. So I believe I understand their impulse to declare that the debate is over: the debate was mostly pointless and often stupid anyway, and the ubiquity of the web makes the comparison among delivery modes ever more moot. So in that sense, I agree with them.
Much as I’d like to agree with them entirely, though, I have to agree with you for two main reasons: the perception battle and what I’ve been calling the OE paradox. The OE (online education) paradox is this: online education will both disappear AND grow; it will become fully integrated AND distinct, at the same time. We will move ever closer to defining courses by affordances rather than delivery mode, but we will never entirely get there, in part because of some of the examples you cite. And even though fighting the perception battle (= battling the perception that online education is inferior to traditional education) is tiresome, wastes energy, and is misguided, the battle will have to be fought for some time. Traditionalists will continue to see traditional education as the gold standard no matter what the evidence; many of them will do so until the day they die. At the most recent Sloan-C conference, I did a presentation on this called “The Never-Ending Battle;” as I informed the audience then, I did not want to be doing this presentation; I find the battle to be tedious and am tired of it; but there are still a lot of late mainstreamers, late adopters, and laggards out there that have yet to be cycled through.
Also at the most recent Sloan-C conference, UCF’s Joel Hartman shared an interesting assertion: there was no ‘gold standard’ until online education came along. IMO there are a couple of key insights embedded in this assertion: 1) before online education, there was distance education — but DE never challenged traditional education until online education came along, and 2) in this sense, the two modes are destined to be locked up in some sort of battle until the battle is finally resolved. (This fits in with disruptive innovation theory as well, BTW.) So I think that Brown and Batson are right about the inevitable outcome, but I also think that they’re jumping the gun a bit — part accuracy, part prediction, and a bit of wishful thinking (a wish that I share, but sadly cannot concur with 100%).
John
Hi, John.
Disruptive theory is a useful model for conceptualizing the impact of new technology on education. I find that paradigms offer a complementary variation of the model. We can think of college as a paradigm built on assumptions, and one of those is the primacy of brick and mortar locations. Thus, when new tech comes along, we try to incorporate it into the existing paradigm. But stuffing smartboards, iPads, and online activities into ancient classrooms is like retrofitting a 1960s gas guzzler or a WWII battleship for 21st century service. It’s costly, and the result is ultimately awkward and out of sync with developments in the real world.
More importantly, it leaves the door wide open for a disruptive innovation. The new paradigm functions under different assumptions that are a better fit for the realities of the 21st century. The old campus-based college will continue to serve those who can afford its traditions, but the new — located in the virtual world — will be universally accessible and far easier to sustain. The result of the shift, in the long run, will be an affordable price tag that will attract increasingly larger numbers of nontraditional students and turn college into a lifelong learning experience for everyone.
I agree that the old (onsite) and the new (online) paradigms will coexist, but the new will gradually dominate.
Your Sloan-C presentation, “The Never-Ending Battle” — is it available for viewing on the web? I’d definitely want to read it — or view it if it recorded.
Jim,
I should clarify that I believe that disruptive innovation theory only explains half the story — phase one of the model is good for explaining the diffusion of online education, but the theory falls apart at phase two IMO. See this review at http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=1669244 for more details.
Re my presentation, see if this link includes a link to download the powerpoint: http://sloanconsortium.org/conferences/2011/aln/never-ending-battle-how-convince-your-skeptics-ol-ok
John
I actually have been involved in a Boot Camp on Moodle to learn that particular system. I took courses at SRI on Blackboard as well.
The best course I have ever taken was one from COSEE. I believe and love hands on science, but this course was ideationally scaffolded for the various instructional groups and for after school educators and the presentations and resources were well beyond anything that a teacher individually could share and offer alone.
http://www.coexploration.org/cosee_west/fall2011/
“Coastal Ocean Observing Systems – An Eye on the Ocean”
In the course I could locate the Chesapeake Bay and through technology manipulate the salinity in the estuary, also the temperature and other variables. It was a wonderful way of using big data,
I think it still misses the smell of the ocean, the surge of the tide and the ocean landscape but it was a powerful learning experience .
Here is another example of what they did to entice me to do this course late at night, while traveling and working.
Keynote: “Tracing Invisible Patterns: Water Quality and Harmful Algal Blooms ”
by Dr. Rebecca Shipe and Dr. Anita Leinweber
Lectures available
Fri Nov 4, 5pm Pacific
Interaction with Dr. Shipe and Dr. Leinweber:
Nov 7 – 11
Special live interactive session for Week 2
Saturday Nov 5, Drs. Shipe and Leinweber will give their week 2 lecture live at UCLA and can be attended in-person or online utilizing Elluminate Live! This live lecture will be followed by a free educator workshop. To register for the workshop: cosee.west@gmail.com or (310) 206-8247.
PRINT PDF with all info: Click here.
I have had previous estuary science so maybe that was the draw.
Bonnie
John, thanks for the links. Your review raises some important issues. For example, at what point in the schooling continuum should disruptive theory be applied? I my opinion, at colleges and, perhaps, 11th and 12th grades.
Your PPT presentation is also a very useful model for addressing skeptics of online learning.
Re the value of the disruptive model in education — I think that adding innovation to the supply and demand algorithm in business is ingenious and fits the schooling model from the point where consumer-type choices are viable. Under present conditions, that means post-secondary.
Bonnie, thanks for sharing your science experience that extends learning into the virtual world. With technology, the classroom is no longer limited to the small space within four walls. It can include an infinite range of learning environments almost anywhere in the world. With this kind of power, we have to wonder why any educator would want to keep this window closed to students.
Thanks, Jim! Re your question about the levels at which disruptive innovation theory applies, the book’s authors clearly intended to apply it to all of K-12. Although I’m intrigued by your notion of using viable consumer-type choices as the criterion for determining its applicability to postsecondary ed, my sense is that the theory has limited applicability because education is not just a business which produces a consumer product. Both K-12 and higher education fulfill a host of multiple functions, whereas the main purpose of business is much simpler: profit.
Likewise, students are more than just consumers; they are also performers, products, an tribal members, as well as potential future benefactors. IMO this is why the second phase of disruptive innovation theory breaks down when applied to education and thus has limited utility.
John: “IMO this is why the second phase of disruptive innovation theory breaks down when applied to education and thus has limited utility.”
Hi, John. I see it differently. A theory is simply an explanation for events. When it can’t deal with anomalies, a new theory is created. (This is the reason I suggested incorporating paradigms in my earlier comment.) I think disruptive theory explains why K-12 resists transformation based on the latest technology. A basic assumption in K-12 is the primacy of place. Schools have a caretaker function in addition to academics. Parents need a safe place to leave their kids when they go to work. This limits the potential impact of innovation.
When viewed from a business perspective, K-12 is a “service” that’s difficult to replace via innovative technology, especially when the strength of that technology is geared to overcoming the limitations of time and space. The fact is, in our society, the virtual environment can’t replace real-time schools and teachers when an essential task is childcare. Thus, despite the mounting costs, K-12 schools survive as they have for over a hundred years.
In the K-12 paradigm, innovation is an add-on, subordinate to its basic assumptions. It’s an anomaly that’s forced to fit into the old paradigm. In this setting, it doesn’t have the power to alter the basic assumption of place. Thus, we have students huddled in classrooms using iPads to go online to access the virtual world.
However, when the caretaker function is eliminated, as in colleges and, perhaps, the upper secondary grades, innovation has a far stronger transformative influence. This is where the latest web-based technology, for example, has the greatest disruptive power. It can and does provide a “new” service (a virtual learning paradigm) that’s cheaper and “creates” a whole new population of students — nontraditional students — who can’t, for whatever reason, attend campus-based classes.
Hi Jim,
Yes, it looks like we see things differently on this one. I appreciate your seeing the value of the custodial function of K-12 schooling, as it is usually almost entirely ignored both in terms of its function and its economic value. (For example, when was the last time you heard an educational critic or commentator point out that the value of K-12 schools increases every time a dual income family is added to the workforce?)
However, IMO the difference between K-12 and higher education is much more than simply the absence or presence of a caretaking function. Both are complex institutions which perform numerous other important societal functions; K-12 (e.g., entertainment, recreational activities provider, health and social services provision, and community education) higher ed (‘rite of passage’ socialization, research, knowledge generation, entertainment, economic mainstay, business partner, human resource developer, global outreach agent, and social change agent.) Also, as someone who has spent the better part of the past year doing college searches with my teenage son, I can safely report that campus/sense of place remains a key part of identity in higher ed, whether that place is 1000 or 50,000. So I just don’t see the caretaker function being the key variable.
Also, a recent post on my web site blog lists a variety of other reasons why online learning adoption lags in K-12 (http://senerknowledge.com/blogs/why-k-12-adoption-ol-will-lag). The flip side of this is that virtual classrooms is not incompatible with the custodial function, as the iPad example you provide indicates. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine someone reconceptualizing the school as a modern-day agora portal, where the teachers are caretakers and guides who help students navigate the Internet as agora (maybe somebody’s already doing this?).
Hi, John. I agree that the custodial function isn’t the only difference between K-12 and college. However, its presence in one and absence in the other is the point I’m trying to underscore re fertility for anytime-anywhere learning environments.
You’re definitely right about the F2F social value of traditional onground colleges. There will always be a demand for brick and mortar experiences for the 18-22 age group. However, disruptive tech’s reach is initially toward the nontraditional population, not your typical freshman searching for a full-time on-campus experience. This “new” group is rapidly changing the face of higher ed, and online tech is the driving force that makes it possible.
Re traditional F2F campus experiences in the e-age — I’ve been drafting an article, off and on for the last couple of months, on this topic and hope to get it out soon.
Hi folks,
Weighing in here a bit late, I certainly understand how one feels compelled to say that because people are still debating the debate can’t be over. On the other hand, if one side is not listening, is it a debate? Similarly, I suppose a battle, as you refer to it John, is indeed a kind of debate.
All of this reminds me of the old Word Processing arguments about using technology to improve writing. The first studies were always complicated by the need to teach the subjects word processing. The later studies were complicated by the difficulty of finding people who were still using pens and pencils.
Thanks for the spirited and nuanced thinking.
Hi, Gary. Thanks for dropping by. It’s been a while since our TS/Innovate days.
I had a good laugh when you mentioned the handwriting vs. wordprocessing debate in the early years when Word Star ruled and the entry point for most of us was a Kaypro CP/M machine. I remember some of my English department colleagues claiming that the only way to write was to, first, do it by hand, then key it in with a wordprocessor. This step ensured that the words would be more natural, genuine.
That debate ended, but it seems to have been a precursor to others that have continued until today. The one that followed was to print or not to print. The conservatives claimed that the most natural arrangement was to print hardcopies, first, then read. Reading onscreen was considered difficult and confusing, unnatural.
When our college went to digital daily bulletins, the outcry was huge. Common practice for many was to print them out. The same happened when we moved to digital catalogs and class schedules. Many insisted on printing hardcopies.
The debate extends into our professional publications: Should they remain hardcopy or move to digital? TS/Innovate was a “radical” movement to take the entire publishing process into the virtual. And we succeeded — for a while. That debate is ongoing.
Our college libraries seem to be moving gracefully away from hardcopy toward digital resources, and rapidly disappearing file cabinets and shelves are the tip-off that hardcopy books and journals may be on the way out, too. This debate won’t end as long as there are digital alternatives to analog practices.
And this brings us to our current discussion on onsite vs. online. In the ed tech community, the question or debate has been, as you seem to imply, to get teachers to incorporate elements of the new technology into their traditional classroom-based pedagogy. This was quite a battle for a while, but we’re at the point now where we can safely claim that that debate is over.
But that victory is very similar to the handwriting vs. wordprocessing debate. We aren’t standing back far enough to see the bigger picture. From a different perspective, we might realize that some of the debates that we considered critical were really just skirmishes in a larger battle that we didn’t fully appreciate until the skirmish was over.
In essence, teachers who use email to connect with students outside of their otherwise onsite classes or who ask their students to use eportfolios as personal publishing platforms to showcase and share their onsite work are just beginning to enter the larger battlefield. In numerous and perhaps even endless skirmishes, they’ll confront other issues that threaten to gradually eat away at their onsite practices.
In fact, even after they’ve moved completely into the virtual world and conduct completely online classes, new issues will arise. Onsite and online aren’t answers but simply different battlegrounds for the ongoing debate on what is best practice. I have to believe that a continuous debate is a good thing, a sign that we’re never satisfied with the status quo and are always probing, experimenting, and challenging ourselves.
Nice to hear you chime in, Gary! I also love the word processing example, and Jim, I haven’t heard the word “Kaypro” in ages.
We may have boiled it down to semantics. Personally, I think your article’s assertion that “the debate is over” is great as a rhetorical and argumentative device because on one level, it is and should have been over a long time ago. On another level, I think that such assertions move us closer toward recognizing the time when the ‘debate as battle’ really is over for all intents and purposes, except of course for a few holdouts.
In the meantime, though, there are all those late mainstreamers, late adopters, and laggards to deal with, along with the early adopters who still see online courses as an option of last resort. In a country where there are still people fiercely debating the merits of the New Deal and whether or not slavery was the main cause of the Civil War, debates about online vs. traditional courses will rage on into the foreseeable future, probably even well after the distinction makes any meaningful sense…
John: “There are all those late mainstreamers, late adopters, and laggards to deal with, along with the early adopters who still see online courses as an option of last resort.” (Emphasis added.)
John, I’m glad you mention those who have actually tried online technology and found it wanting. Their opinions seem especially damning since they are apparently speaking from experience. “I tried it and don’t like it” sounds a lot more credible than “I’ve never tried it and never will.”
I’m convinced that the difference is in the quality of experience. One of the reasons I insist on distinguishing between blended and completely online approaches is this very quality. The experience of a teacher in a blended course is completely different from that of one in an online course. This difference holds true for teachers with a mix of online and blended courses as well as a full schedule of online classes while firmly entrenched in a campus office or worksite.
The tether to brick and mortar campuses is an acknowledgement that completely online is not a viable option. A campus base is still required. The problem with this anchor is that the teachers will never fully understand and appreciate the virtual learning and teaching environment. Cutting the tether is a release from place-bound thinking, and the emerging perspective opens up a completely different view of what education can be.
Another analogy: To fully understand a lion, we’d have to observe it in its natural world. Studying it in a zoo, in a small cage, would yield limited results. By the same token, to fully appreciate online teaching and learning, we need to observe it in the real virtual world — not in a caged version of it.
hi john, could you figure out these approaches used to enhance traditional education? is there any other way to enhance the instruction except web-based instruction?
Like back in the day when some of us were getting inferior schooling and nobody cared, there are these people who forget that broadband and tech tools are not ubiquitous. This is some information that may help to explain what I am talking about.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/12/a_new_digital_divide.html
There are also minority serving organizations. Schools and colleges that have dire needs in getting a good technology infrastructure.
Then there are these headlines.
The gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology, and those with very limited or no access at all.
In broadband race, USA is not No. 1
How Big Telecom Used Smartphones to Create a New Digital Divide
There are, in essence, two Internets emerging in the United States.
More at Benton.org. ( digital divide)
Bonnie, thanks for the reminder about the digital divide. Equipment, applications, and high-speed access impacts all of us, directly or indirectly, but there are still pockets of students and educators who have minimal technological resources. Some of the toughest questions we have to ask is: Who is responsible for this divide? Why are they allowed to continue? What can we do to change or replace these individuals or groups?
The questions you ask Jim are the reason I continue to explore, examine, get involved, and try to share the ideas of technology with
groups that are suspect. Who is responsible for this divide?
Some of the divide is technology that moves faster than most people or schools can adapt to good uses of technology. There was in many schools a new layer of authority put in and unfortunately the people knew their technology but were not always adept at content. I think
as Dr. Paul Resta explains, the amount of information that is available has exploded so that we do have an information divide as well.
Brian Solis wrote in an article
The Information Divide Between Traditional And New Media
My experience was to have a nine year old boy know more about astrophysics than I did ( dad was a scientist) but Dad was also a PI for a NSF grant which Dad and son informed me of and I was accepted.
I enjoyed learning from a triage of UC Berkeley, NASA, and resources that were at a museum. It was a gift from a child.
Then there is this site. I love it. I remember thinking , is earh science geography? Is history a part of geography how do I put these together.
http://www.windows2universe.org/ I cannot replicate or create this tool that is so fascinating . I use the heck out of it.
What I liked about what Marc Prensky said about partnerships is the thing that the director of NOAA said. We can share from the field information that may take ten years to be put into books. So in Science on a Sphere at NOAA they also use visualization and modeling and GIS to teach using imagery. I love that use of technology and it is not in classrooms but is available to informal science groups.
I believe there is one near you and yes I believe in field trips taking kids who have prior knowledge of what it is that they are going to see. [Click here to visit the SOS site.]
I simply went to the Sant Hall of Science to observe kids learning from this modality. It was amazing to see them get the idea of plates. ocean systems and etc and to see them want to sit through it again and again. Most adults got pushed out of the way.
Here is an old educational outreach initiative from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. It has been around for at least a decade. bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu
http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/
I think when we went into testing to meet the needs of
NCLB science got gated and any of us who dared to use technology in wonderful ways got shoved out of the door.
The emphasis on using technology may have been to create a streamline way to test. But there are other areas that can be improved with the use of the technologies we know.
Being a pioneer in technology is risky . I remember people laughing when I introduced the cell phone , told that there would be movies and video, and applications . I have never been invited back to Georgia for a technology conference , and they treated me as if I had widgets growing out of my head.. So it is safe to
remain in the stone age. In urban schools there is even a deeper problem. We want to get them test ready so there can be little in the way of innovative learning, because we , as educators, as administrators do not trust learning in the new ways. Probably because we don’t know how to assess well the depth of learning that can be achieved. We are still looking for cookie cutter learning at levels. Too bad.
I have a friend in New Zealand who got it that reading could be personalized and she created a program that in the US is called Award Reading, but she is not one of the platinum sponsors of the big conferences so her participation is limited and not boosted because of its excellence. Publishers have to pay to play. So
Some of us know that Award Reading is good stuff.
This is from the web page . “Learning in a digital format
At AWARD Reading Online, you will find hundreds of pre-K-3 interactive resources. Carefully scaffolded skills activities in the five key areas of reading ensure that all students master the essentials of reading. This additional online content is available upon purchase of AWARD print and technology packages.” I went to New Zealand to learn the system and taught it so that is how I know.
Website here. http://www.awardreadingonline.com/index.php
Why are they allowed to continue?
Education in America is is political and the government gives a big sweep each time we have a new candidate. Don’t get me started since I have survived several administrations. But you have to do the dance. You also have to do what the school board in your area
has in mind. When I worked for President Clinton, they did not believe in the use of technology, so they banished me to a career education school. It is now a STEM academy.
What can we do to change or replace these individuals or groups?
Well some of the groups have broken down the silos.
I am not a PhD. and the decisions for funding and innovation are usually made by people above the fray of the classroom.
It would be nice if there was a reality check. But
usually there are networks of people who bring their people to
funding and those of us who are not in the network, well
I should not say that because I did have an NSF Grant.
One of my harshest critics from the Supercomputing field
introduced the group from Los Alamos who were a part of my
NSFgrant and they were over the moon about how I had helped years ago. Here is the web site. Teachers get punished a lot for
being different , well that is what I think.
We are at this point at least talking and sharing ideas.
Digital Promise hopes to do that but they have so much competition
My two cents.
Bonnie
Thanks, Bonnie. I think you’ve gotten to the heart of the problem. Educational leaders, as a whole, are like herrings, and it’s interesting that when herrings form a dense and synchronized ball for protection from predators, the formation is called “schooling.” This way no one stands out and no one person can be blamed for poor decisions. Until we can get accountability from the decision makers, failure will continue to be blamed on the hapless classroom teachers. It’s an interesting system. From the teachers’ perspective, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
I thought this from the Answer Sheet was important to the discussion
Ravitch: ‘Miracle schools’ not so miraculous after all
By Valerie Strauss
[Click here to read the article.]
Bonnie, thanks for sharing this Diane Ravitch letter. Education leaders are all too quick to jump on the bandwagon that features the latest silver bullet. Like the latest fashions, we see one magical trend after another and fail to see that this grasping for the latest models is part of the problem. The result is a system that carelessly discards promising pedagogy along with the trash in a wild race to grab the next craze that comes along.
[…] Online and Traditional Courses: The Debate Is Over? By Jim Shimabukuro Editor This is the sort of article that you read and reread with a shake of the head in between. In "Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer?" (WCET, … Source: etcjournal.com […]
[…] Online and Traditional Courses: The Debate Is Over? By Jim ShimabukuroEditorThis is the sort of article that you read and reread with a shake of the head in between. In "Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer? Source: etcjournal.com […]
[…] Online and Traditional Courses: The Debate Is Over? By Jim Shimabukuro Editor This is the sort of article that you read and reread with a shake of the head in between. In "Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer? Source: etcjournal.com […]
[…] of the head in between. In “Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer?Via etcjournal.com GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]
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Love the discussion here. It will arm me for my trip into rural Virginia where tobacco and the peanut used to be King.. Will see how technology resonates within a community now that is ringed by an economy dependent on incarcerated felons and such.
Bonnie
Hi, Bonnie. I hope you and your colleagues will be able to convince the powers that be that technology can turn even the most remote or rundown schools into 21st century windows to the world’s knowledge and events. The new tech is an equalizer, unparalleled in the history of education. To deny it to any learner out of ignorance or fear is, in my opinion, a crime.
Found Dana Boyd, a researcher at Microsoft who talks about who most programs are pitched at ..
and this:
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?
By HELEN F. LADD and EDWARD B. FISKE
[Click here to read the article.]
At the Microsoft Conference in DC Dana Boyd was talking about how difficult it was.. well here are her words from her. [Click here to read the comment.]
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