4 responses to “Online education”

1. 

   Allen Mickle

   June 24, 2010 at 6:09 pm

   Do you mean the “medium is the message?”

    
   • 

     Michael Riley

     June 24, 2010 at 6:17 pm

     Actually, I’m referencing Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.

     Drawing on the ideas of media scholar Marshall McLuhan—altering McLuhan’s aphorism “the medium is the message”, to “the medium is the metaphor”—he describes how oral, literate, and televisual cultures radically differ in the processing and prioritization of information; he argues that each medium is appropriate for a different kind of knowledge. The faculties requisite for rational inquiry are simply weakened by televised viewing.

     Postman’s chapter on how TV changes education should be required reading for every edutopian who thinks that moving classes online is a mere change of format.

      
2. 

   unknowing

   June 24, 2010 at 6:57 pm

   I’m taking an online class right now. I hate it. I hate the limited medium. Its no way to get humane learning.

   Fortunately what I’m learning isn’t humane!

    
3. 

   Allen Mickle

   June 30, 2010 at 9:33 am

   Thanks Mike for the correction. I have read Postman’s book but it has been a long time!