The Original Surveyor of Distance Education and Virtual Learning
January 23, 2010
G. Parker Rossman
My original review of this book seems to have vanished into thin air here at Amazon.
G. Parker Rossman and his book came into my life just after I started the international conference on “National Security & National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions,” and both the book and the World Brain discussion group that he co-founded were extremely influencial in my recognition that the ultimate outcome for a re-appreciation of open sources instead of secret sources was a global networked “world brain.”
From my point of view, he was the first serious scholar to comprehensively begin documenting what could be learned online, and the first–at a time when fewer than 10% of those who could afford a computer were actually online–to really begin outlining the possibilities for both distance education and virtual learning.
It was as a direct result of his influence through this book that Gottfried Mayer-Kress spoke to the conference in 1997 on the topic of the World Brain, and that was when the entire modern Open Source Intelligence movement took a decisive turn away from helping the US Government get a grip on reality, and toward connecting and empowering all multinational sources of information for the good of all.
I have listed both this author and Gottfried Mayer-Kress in the World Brain line-up that runs from H. G. Wells through Vannavar Bush to today's proponents for Collective Intelligence, the World Brain, and a Global Game in which we all play ourselves and all of us have access to “true cost” information in all languages all the time.
Here are ten other books I recommend with this one, I have reviewed and summarized all of them:
Foundations of Distance Education (Routledge Studies in Distance Education)
Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Don't Bother Me Mom–I'm Learning!
Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age
The Knowledge Executive
Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America's Research Universities Can Do for the Economy, the Workplace, and the Community (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
For the other 1,500 reviews relevant to this book, in 98 categories that Amazon refuses to create for reviewers like myself to be more accessible, visit Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. Education (General), Education (Universities), and multiple Intelligence (Collective, Commercial, Government, Public) are representative catagories.
