After reading about how our created content is driving e-commerce and where the roots of web 2.0 come from in the Lister article, I feel like I had a first hand experience to see this in action yesterday. I had the chance to meet with the global market directors of a famous publisher who are in charge of emerging markets, such as Latin America and Asia.

After listening to them talk about the trope of digital immigrants vs. digital natives (and how that is currently driving their development) it was interesting to hear that all of their content was now being developed digitally before being developed in print. I can imagine that the costs are greatly reduced and it also makes distribution a cinch, but I found it interesting that their publishing focus was now on the digital. Mexico is a great market for any publisher. There are loads of private schools as well as the behemoth that is the SEP. What also grabbed my attention was their focus on the development of mobile/tablet content. It seems that they are working backwards from the mobile towards the written text. What ramifications does this have?

They are also investing research and development into algorithmic software to be used in error correction for learners and to help teachers grade writing, they also touched on presence (or did I?) and the interface of slick applications in order to engage learners. Worrying things that came out of their discourse for me: The ‘learnification’ of education (their discourse sometimes sounded like learners were piggy-banks of information), the tension between the economic and the educational (after all, they’re publishers and they want to sell books), their deep interest in teacher training (shouldn’t that be an individual’s concern, closely followed by an institution’s?)

Perhaps it’s just #MSCDE paranoia kicking in, but every time people mention technology and education my ears prick up and I’m ready to start criticising, especially when a talk begins “we all know that there is a divide between digital natives and digital immigrants”. I think, unfortunately for us here in Mexico, the divide is between traditional views of education and more constructivist, progressive views of education.