I the case of Electronic Mediated Education the situation is the same.
If not questioned, it will be used to maintain a scavenging model of
exploitation that have been sustaining humans for a long time.
Technology is not the answer, only if accompanied with participation
and renewal.=20
Take the example of cars in North America, which shrunk their length
in the seventies, because of the oil crisis, and now have been growing
in height. Have they change? YES! Have the culture changed? NO! Is
your computer, your watch, your VCR, your stereo, your phone
renewable? Do we realize that they are ubiquitous and cheap in part
only because of the low waged labor in third world countries. Mostly
women, by the way.=20
But unfortunately a split between First and Third world (consuming and
producing resources respectively) is replicated in
Academia/Industry/Business ..., Science/Engineering/Social
Science/Humanities, ... Education/Training/Practicing ...
Mind/Body/Environemnt..., Teacher/Student/Staff...,
Man/Woman/Gay/Child/Elder..., European/Asian/African/Latino... and a
myriad of other examples and situations in which unidirectional
hierarchies and scales are established and taken for granted.=20
"Digital Diploma Mills" are just symptoms or echoes of these
hierarchies and models. If not questioned, they will be just
reproduced in other intertwined scales.=20
The solution will not be achieved only by protecting these
hierarchical boundaries (e.g.. Academia from Business). It is a double
bind case, in which not only barriers have to be re-broken, but also
bridges have to the re-build.
Both academia and industry have to change instead of maintained. If
they will and when are another questions. It is the way we understand
and practice education that have to be questioned.=20
=20
My understanding of learning phenomena aligns with Freire's Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, or Bakhtin's Answerability as used by Wertsch in
extending Vygotsky's work in education. It is close to Engestrom's
approach as in "Learning by expanding" and Lave's Communities of
Practice, and your "Textual Politics", Jay. Learning is cultural and
ecological.=20
luiz