Today one of the etmooc tweets on my gmail talked about Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: How the Internet turned Consumers into Collaborators.  This is an important book about which I have lots of caveats from an educational standpoint.  I agree in general with Tim Walker’s review in general on the rest.  The internet has been the platform that subsidized lots collaboration, but basically of a social or political sort.  Despite what Shirky and Walker say about the early internet as a top-down educational tool, the original net (called Apranet) was rather very definitely academic and an equal-to-equal extension of sharing.  And to some extent it has continued as such, though the most public face of that is the open code initiatives like Linux and Apache, and now Wikipedia.  Cognitive surplus is one way to look at it, cognitive overload is another, but as I see it, the internet has the potential of providing a level educational playing field.  Google at one time wanted to contribute to that.  We need more of that, More Kahn Universities or TEDs.  But even then there will be one ingredient missing, the human driving force that is the demanding and insightful teacher, whether in grade, secondary, or higher education, who knows his or her field or discipline very well (and now must be literate in the new technology which is replacing the lecture hall, class room, books in a brick and mortar library).  I have just found that Shirky’s talk on Cognitive Surplus will not play on TED, so I must now look into that.  Enough for the day.

I am also at Wooley’s Blog on peaclassics.wordpress.com and twitter.com/awooley