quot; The session featured a facilitated conversation about how hospitals and health care providers are using new media and social networking software to support their primary objectives — treatment, research, education and outreach, and patient-provider communication. Three panelists steered the discussion: Ed Bennett, Manager of Web Operations at the University of Maryland Medical Center Aimee Roundtree, Assistant Professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in medical and science writing, hypermedia and technology, web publishing

The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning. Course content is similarly fragmented. Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. George Siemens describes how networks disrupt traditional teaching : The old model, he writes, “works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher.

My own view is that communities can evolve, but cannot be designed top down. So begins one of my favorite education writers although I think he might be more appropriately thought of as a learning advocate. I suppose that technically no one is outside of a community when he or she learns, but much of what we call education these day seems isolating and by oneself. My own view is that communities can evolve, but cannot be designed top down. I agree with him. Textual Gastronomy TEX2ALL Home About November 26, 2006 The Dangers of “Retrospective Coherence” In my last post I left the reader in a bind–what are we supposed to do in the face of an unresponsive hierarchy?