Good content Maha 🙂

Content depends entirely on context for defintion. I am never sure what is meant by content. So I invariably end up asking…

Are we talking about instructions, books, articles, games, photocopies, audios, videos, everything on the net, student produced content, the content of the ministerial guidelines for teachers (in this case content is an expression of power)?

Are we talking about the structure of the learning space?

Disneyland is full of content – that might be considered as a learning environment.

Are we talking about education or training?

Learning the highway code in order to pass a driving test is not the same as receiving education to become a reflective teacher.

Learning the highway code with no practical driving lessons is probably a bit of a waste of money.

Is education a question of selection or a question of empowerment?

How will we be spending our time in our education/training?

What skills, competences, literacies, roles, will we be developing?

If we mean by infrastructure having access to ideas, concepts, experiences, etc etc of course it is important to learning.

If we haven’t worked out that content expresses social relations more than anything else then we are not going to get very far working out how to develop relationships between learners and those ‘experts’ (or other individuals) who express their ideas, skills, competences, literacies, roles, through such containers of potential meaning.

Where I get very discontented is when I see teachers and learners reduced to dependence on publishers’ text-books/moocs/courses which artificially stunt growth, stilt interaction, and remove all spontaneous thought or action from a group of humans in order to make money out of them and then give them a badge for being ‘good consumers’ I mean good teachers/learners (of course).