Greg Beatty writes:

What is next?  In no particular order...dying off, partnerships, assumptions, and real experiments.

Dying off--has been predicted and even quantified, but as online schools continue to grow, financially marginal local schools will be pushed closer to the edge.

Partnerships are already happening, but will continue, and will continue to confuse the conversation. Many corporations are moving into the online training market, and many have made deals with either local schools or known national colleges to integrate college classes into their offerings. Assumptions--will come before real articulated standards. It is already common to assume that a student can use a telephone; it is becoming a common assumption that he or she can use email, and, soon, basic web browsers.

Real experiments: my own leaning is towards really pushing the link between embodiment and language use--to have students role play different genders or ethnicities, and to see where their own contexts emerge, to try to create fully coherent shared voices, weaving image, text, and design into new
collective virtual entities. One experiment that is being tried at places like Western Governor's is converting credits to competencies, and producing certificates testifying to quantifiable sums of knowledge or skill. The humanities will be forced onto the defensive if this gains ground, as Yeats and Joyce don't convert well.

Electronic rhetorics: once we're all in and flailing around, we'll finally get a sufficient number of focused studies on how rhetoric works and should work in the virtual public space, and how these practices interweave with face to face discursive practices.

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