Stephen Downes

Laura Czerniewicz posts her contribution to a book publiched by the Chronicle, Rebooting the Academy, edited by Tim McCormick and Jeffrey R. Young. She argues, "based on the open-web and premised on emerging digitally-mediated social practices, the key trends of openness, mobiles, and rich media coalesce to enable numerous opportunities for education."The perspective is South African, which poses particular challenges to e-learning, including a significant income inequality and a lack of access to services in many regions. In response, "the foundational characteristics (the affordances) of the digital permeate the three key value points for learners in universities enabling the reshaping of:

• content (access to and apprenticeship to disciplinary knowledge, content creation) ;
• interaction (between peers, between students and academic experts through pedagogy, feedback and engagement) ; and
• accreditation (summative evaluation and certification)."

Good article, good perspective. (p.s. Czerniewicz points to the Opening Scholarship blog, which aggregates a number of southern voices in education.)