Designing new learning

I have been reading George Siemen's elearning newsletter from 20 August. In it he discusses a number of different issues to do with e-Learning and there is a link to his Powerpoint presentation titled "Designing New Learning Landscapes". It is worth a look as he raises a number of questions which we need to ask ourselves about the potential of e-Learning and whether it is being realised by our education sytem.
Questions such as:
Has the design of our institutions matched the changes in our interactions with information and with each other?

He acknowledges some changes have occurred with teachers moving away from asking questions like "is Technology effective?" to "how can we use Technology as a lever for transformation?"

The presentation ends by looking at scenarios and future directions.

The newsletter also discusses Howard Rheingold's presentation about a project he has been working on called Social Media Classroom which incorporates emerging technologies into classrooms -Key quote: don't worry about keeping up with the technologies so much as keeping up with the literacies the technologies enable. This is similar to what Michael Wesch's says in his presentations. It leaves me feeling relieved as there is no way that I can keep up with the new technologies out there without leaving my job and working on it full time and even then I couldn't be sure ... perhaps it's my "digital immigrant" label revealing itself!