This week in our class we read an interesting article, “Minds on Fire” that brought up some interesting issues. The main point that stuck out in my own mind was the fact that in our society today as the internet is growing our educational system as it is will not be able to meet all of the needs of students. Our society is calling for more highly educated workers as they enter the workforce. Those workers are going to need to be able to access newly acquired skills quickly for their new employers. This article suggests, “To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.” (Brown and Adler, 2008, P.17).  I strongly believe this large demand for higher education could essentially cause the larger universities issues if they have not looked ahead to the future and implemented new outlooks for educating the larger number of students.  Brown and Adler (2008) state, “It is unlikely that sufficient resources will be available to build enough new campuses to meet the growing global demand for higher education-at least not the sort of campuses that we have traditionally built for colleges and universities. Nor is it likely that the current methods of teaching and learning will suffice to prepare students for the lives that they will lead in the twenty-first century.” (P. 18).  This statement implies that our educational system needs to consider changes in how they have their teachers teaching and students learning. One major change that should be considered is utilizing the new technologies to expand the classroom walls outside of the traditional classroom setting.  Building more buildings to house the number of students wanting to enter into higher education is not feasible. In such a short amount of time, the world of education is being opened up to anyone who lives anywhere in the world without traveling or moving to attend a certain school. How exciting is this!  

Reference

Brown, J. S. & Adler, R. P. (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. Retrieved on April 14, 2012 from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf