Always good to hear your perspective. I’m sure you’ve read it, but I’ve been coming back to Jay Cross’s “Informal Learning” book again and again as a great guide to thinking about all of this. I highly recommend it.

Btw, I love the term “node-ness”. I add “nodey” as well. ;0)

I teach multimedia for high schools, but I’ve changed it up a bit. I use the desktop programs, then introduce comparable web 2.0 (web-based) programs, and we then wiki – discussing, embedding, linking etc. Thank you to Go2Web2.0.net – great directory! Anyway, I feel my students have a broader grasp of communicating and truely utilizing the web.

IMO, I don’t think a massive re-org of our system to a new technology driven form of education will occur until todays students are the teachers, and maybe more importantly until they are the administrators. It amazes how many teachers still back away and tremble to the thought of changing and incorporating more technology to their curriculum.

I am also thinking about the distinction between formal and informal learning. We are already moving toward an equalization of the two. Or perhaps it is the complete blurring of the notion that formal learning is valued more than informal learning. I am in a newly designed doctoral program which is beginning to value learning outside the institutional channels. In fact, because it is partly practicum-based it must value the informal. This means that I am drawing on “external” sources like the Downes/Siemens massively online Connectivism Course and MIT’s OpenCourseWare as part of my doctoral education

Of course, this begs us to consider whether anything or everything is external to one’s learning. The graphic above shows us just how fluid our learning world has become as the degrees of separation and the “node-ness” of the world is revealed, like the dichotomies of informal/formal and internal/external, to be another illusion cast upon the walls of Plato’s cave.

– students guide their own learning with strong connections to existing global conversations and online experts
– classroom teachers transition from lecturers to guides that help students develop their individual plans and connect with online resources

I understand what you mean about excited and skeptical…but I think I’m excited that it’s probably the best way forward and skeptical that we’ll be able to get rid of the red tape and nay-sayers.