James G. R. Cronin

Keri Facer's work with Futurelab, proposes six future scenarios structured around increasingly individualised, increasingly collective or increasingly contested approaches towards life and education. Scenario 1: Informed choice -- " Learning is a bespoke, life-long journey ". Scenario 2: Independent consumers -- " Learning is an individual responsibility, educational providers are suppliers responsible for ensuring quality of delivery ". Scenario 3: Discovery -- " Learners are encouraged to recognise that there are many communities in which they might participate, each with its own values, priorities, demands and focus, and to draw on a variety of these in constructing their course through education. They are supported in this by mentors, whose role is to guide learners around knowledge situated within a particular community and to help them access related communities. Mentors do not simply relay established practices or patterns of thought – learners are e...

An alternative perspective on collaboration features in Leah A. Lievrouw’s recently published book, Alternative and Activist New Media (Polity Press, 2011), where the collaborative activity of digital activists, directed at blocking the smooth flow of dominant socio-cultural discourses, is a dominant feature of the five genres of new media activism surveyed -- culture-jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism, mediated mobilisation, and commons knowledge. By surveying the activities at the fringe Lievrouw hopes to better understand the dynamics at the institutional centre. She concludes that these genres of media activism are good indicators of a contemporary cultural ‘turn’ from broadcasting to mediation. Mediation can ‘push’ culture in certain ways. In the context of digital cultures, mediation, Lievrouw argues, will continue to be an ongoing, mutually shaping relationship between personal uses of communication technologies (reconfiguration) and their communicative ac...