Convergence Education

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Description

Robert Hughes Jr.:

"The emphasis in open education is on the elements of participation and collective intelligence. I have begun to wonder if it may be useful to build on Henry Jenkin's "Convergence Culture" model as a basis for education.

A central idea in Jenkins book is the idea the breakdown of viewing cultural products and activities as discrete entities, but beginning to view these a part of a larger, more integrated fabric. Also, Jenkins suggests that rather than seeing video vs. books, or text vs. video, or amateur vs. expert, that the future lies in the development of models that are designed across platforms.

In education there is still too much discussion of the online vs. F2F teaching, informal vs. formal learning, open vs. closed education. Rather than continues these disputes, the idea of "convergence" helps us to recognize that the future is not a mater of "either/or," but a matter of "convergence."

For education, the simple version of this convergence would be thinking in these terms-- linking formal and informal learning, linking courses across semesters, departments, institutions; linking blogs, video, lectures, study groups; and building classrooms across age, gender, social class, states, regions, and countries." (http://open2learn.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-convergence-education-better-term.html)