Life-long learning on the inclusive web

Abstract

If our formal education systems were to be graded on achieving the following assignment: "to enable all students to reach their diverse, full potential, so that they can be prosperous, self-guided contributors to our global community," our systems of education would be flunking. The impact of this failure will exponentially worsen over time, given socio-technical trends. To achieve this crucial learning goal we need more than incremental improvement. We need disruptive innovation. Can the Web be the disruptive impetus and generative scaffolding for an education system that can achieve this goal? How can we both reform and leverage Web accessibility approaches to support this mission? These are the questions explored in this article. Complex adaptive systems, emerging decentralized systems of trust, "small" and "thick" data analytics, Internet of things sensing, open platforms, but most importantly -- connected communities, are all recruited in the thought experiment to craft a candidate response.