{"id":712,"date":"2006-07-29T03:32:21","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T03:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/so-trendy-online-learning-is-a-bad-thing\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:05:02","slug":"so-trendy-online-learning-is-a-bad-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/so-trendy-online-learning-is-a-bad-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"So, &#8220;Trendy&#8221; Online Learning is a Bad Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Between the U.S. House defeat of COPE Net Neutrality provisions and their recent 410 &#8211; 15 passage of DOPA, I am really beginning to question my <span>online<\/span> learning aspirations.  Is it as dire as some predict? Are we headed straight for the Internet Dark Ages?  <\/p>\n<p>I didn&#39;t fully grasp the twisted mindset on the DOPA issue until I read the text of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomas.gov\/cgi-bin\/query\/z?c109:H.R.5319.EH:\">DOPA House Bill<\/a> &#8211; Warning! Like hearing Senator Stevens&#39; explanation of the Internet, it is painful to read how our elected officials define and characterize the Internet resources that I rely on daily in my <span>online<\/span> learning interactions.   With a sweeping broad brush, they <span>condemn<\/span> all commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.  Setting aside the fact that Congress makes a distinction between &quot;commercial&quot; and &quot;noncommercial&quot; sites (I guess predators are repelled by &quot;noncommercial&quot; sites?),  I am dumbfounded that the drafters of the Bill selected the word &quot;trendy&quot; as the best choice to negatively portray the image of chat rooms and social networking sites.  <span>Oooo<\/span>!  Watch out!  You are reading this blog on a &quot;trendy&quot; <span>Drupal<\/span> social networking site . . . how scary . . . Lindsay <span>Lohan<\/span> may be logged on, too. Oh, wait, no worries . . . this is a &quot;noncommercial&quot; site . . . but, if I run banner ads? . . . Thank goodness Congress is there to burn our online wiki books, toss the baby out with the bath water and protect us from all this Internet madness . . .  <\/p>\n<p> <!-- technorati tags begin --><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 10px; text-align: right\">technorati tags:<a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/DOPA\">DOPA<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags end --><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 8px\">Blogged with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flock.com\" target=\"_new\" title=\"Flock\">Flock<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between the U.S. House defeat of COPE Net Neutrality provisions and their recent 410 &#8211; 15 passage of DOPA, I am really beginning to question my online learning aspirations. Is it as dire as some predict? Are we headed straight for the Internet Dark Ages? I didn&#39;t fully grasp the twisted mindset on the DOPA&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-online-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3188,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/3188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}