Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to begin. xTreme learning seems to be some sort of sleep-deprivation based behaviour modification exercise (a lot like EST). Perhaps I'll begin with the challenge itself: "A plate shifting in South China Sea was caused by a sudden earthquake. As a consequence, a new unmanned island, A, appeared. Your task is to win the offer from the venture capitalist to exploit it into an offshore oil city by building a material delivery system and writing a business plan." This is propaganda of the worst sort disguising itself as education. Then there's the whole sublayer of claiming IP rights and copyright, deemed to be essential to this 'learning' exercise. Maybe China has much more in common with exploitative capitalism than people usually suspect - I wouldn't be surprised. But this is a representation of a way of seeing the world that is fundamentally alien to me.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 07:32 a.m.

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