Sound bites from Stephen Downes's presentation

Institutional based learning - the silo model. Prediction of moving towards a metauniversity – accessing learning from a personal learning environment. The talk offers some discussion of the architecture for the Meta University is important for beginning to map where the various open source protocols, tools and

“We need a system that is optimised towards slotting in new pieces as they become available, not as an after-thought or an add on, but as a fundamental characteristic of the system”

Michael Feldstein, August 2005

Charles M. Vest – measures for successful networks

-          Diversity many objectives)

-          Interwoven (many activities)

-          Open (many minds)

Diversity comes when individuals in the network make their decisions autonomously – no one tells them what to do. They do so in the context of the network, and their actions have impacts upon those networks (interwoven) – learning is not separate from everything else we do. Open standards and interoperability then becomes crucial for us to take best advantage of the systems we’re embedded in and creating.

Metaversity model that came to Stephen in a dream last night – not an application but a network.

The automatic production of metadata

Structured blogging – the increasingly fine grain of specific applications.

Comments

[brent]

I love Downes' passion, insight and futurist perspective but I wonder how grounded in the realities of current institutions his vision is... transformations on the scale of the suggested "meta-university" seem to imply that the continuation of the university as we know it, an organized institution with economic and competitive goals that authenticates qualifications, would be nearing it's end. While there are obviously transformations of the institution occuring, I'm not sure that a meta-university existing purely in an online haze of data traversals is going to replace something of the more traditional (social?) roles that the institution provides. Perhaps this article by Miejas, might give a better idea of what i'm getting at: http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/knowledgetree/edition07/html/la_mejias.html - the brick'n'mortar of the university does more than just educate and i wonder if at times we undervalue this. Just some late night maastricht thoughts...