CBC radio host Paul Kennedy, a student of Marshall McLuhan, shared that his prolific professor once lamented, “This is not a university it is is a multiversity!”He felt that the words were borne slightly out of McLuhan’s frustration over the lack of any interaction, communication or collaboration among various disciplines in academia. In short, no one talked to each other.

This made me wonder how McLuhan, a universal hero of media ecology and coiner of über crucial quotes such as “Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!” and “The medium is the message.” would think about #ETMOOC?

I think he’d be proud. McLuhan wanted the dearth of interaction to end between the faculties. With #ETMOOC the walls are let down. Consider the walls as a metaphor for resistance to collaboration raised against sharing or crowd sourcing knowledge/ideas. With #ETMOOC McLuhan would see a “global village” of committed educator/learners willingly taking part, contributing, reshaping, reflecting encouraging and being encouraged. They would be using technology as the medium to share content, create meaning and to take learning further.

Prior to this century, collaboration seemed  much like a hostage bound behind ivy walled ivory tower worlds or  gagged inside dusty transmission style lecture halls taught by John Houseman type professors who only shared with their ilk and few else.

 And why not…? It had worked for so many centuries keeping education in the hands of a privileged few. 

Afterall, it was “the” model that worked in the past. But, whose past?
Was it all to preserve the perceived importance of feeding “the system” while maintaining economic class structures?

When I think of the future of education from JK to PhD,  I fear it will not survive well if it embraces the Industrial Revolution models for 21st century thinkers that often kept learners in the dark, while second guessing abilities and self-worth. Going forward, educators, researchers or students who choose not to communicate/collaborate with one another will become increasingly marginalized and ultimately left behind.

This thought again takes me to #ETMOOC. Since discovering it, 3 months have raced past in a digital world which has allowed me to participate and contribute therein. What a whirlwind! After several Blackboard Collaborations, Haiku Decks, 5 Card Flickrs, #etmchats, blogs, Tweets and 1 wicked awesome Lip-dub later, I arrive today more whole and much the wiser. In the words of all those Fantasy Island, NY commercials, “FUN!? WOW!”

So why can this not be anything but academic in its universal adaptation and embrace by the global education community? 

A final task asked us to consider our 6 word story as through the lens of #ETMOOC.
So her goes…

Each one teach and repeat.

As always… I am a work in progress.

Thank you all for being my teachers.

*Featured on the broadcast was Neil Turok from the Perimeter Institute  and the pair discussed the future of  technology, science and education as it. Here is the conversation. http://pirsa.org/displayFlash.php?id=12100057

*Photo from http://lawmindscience.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/paper-chase-lecture.jpg