Sebastian Fiedler has a point; we'd better remember the physical and emotional realities, the real system complexities, that we hope our students will master by the time they're through with school. In short, let's not forget the profound things we must teach. To name a few of the primo curricula from which to graduate:

self understanding

using legitimate means of persuasion

making and maintaining friendships

choosing good over evil action in familiar and unfamiliar circumstances

distinguishing between nurturant, neutral and destructive social systems

deploying active and adaptive learning skills

With those pay-offs in mind let's listen as Seb explains the nature and limitations of digital learning objects.

It is important to note that Illich's idea of "educational objects" does not map entirely on the notion of "(digital) learning objects" that is currently quite popular with educational and instructional technology researchers and developers. "David Wiley", for example, offers the following definition of Learning Objects in his chapter "Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy" in the online book The Instructional Use of Learning Objects:

Learning objects are elements of a new type of computer-based instruction grounded in the object-oriented paradigm of computer science. Object-orientation highly values the creation of components (called [base "]objects[per thou]) that can be reused (Dahl & Nygaard, 1966) in multiple contexts. This is the fundamental idea behind learning objects: instructional designers can build small (relative to the size of an entire course) instructional components that can be reused a number of times in different learning contexts. Additionally, learning objects are generally understood to be digital entities deliverable over the Internet, meaning that any number of people can access and use them simultaneously (as opposed to traditional instructional media, such as an overhead or video tape, which can only exist in one place at a time). Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions. These are significant differences between learning objects and other instructional media that have existed previously. [David Wiley]

Illich on the other hand looks at things[as opposed to digital abstractions of things, emboldening is mine, Spike Hall] as basic resources for learning. This is a much more radical point of departure. We then have to think about the educational value of artifacts and their accessiblity in a given environment. Illich writes:

... in the city rich and poor alike are artificially kept away from most of the things that surround them. Children born into the age of plastics and efficiency experts must penetrate two barriers which obstruct their understanding: one built into things and the other around institutions. Industrial design creates a world of things that resist insight into their nature, and schools shut the learner out of the world of things in their meaningful setting. [Ivan Illich]

I think that Illich makes a very important point here. Sure, we can use digital representations of all kind of things and processes. We might even be able to create giant (and distributed) repositories of these digital learning objects (see, for example, "Stephen Downes" proposal for design principlesfor for such a network). What I don't agree with is the current, almost exclusive, fixation on digital learning objects. Illich righfully calls for a different orientation:

The general physical environment must be made accessible, and those physical learning resources which have been reduced to teaching instruments must become generally available for self-directed learning. [Ivan Illich]

[Seblogging News]

Seb finishes by asking that we use our digital connections and systems to bring the world, fully-fleshed--not abstracted , and the learner in closer contact.

We have made an awful mistake if we disproportionately fixate on what we can teach with digital representation--this is far too small a subset of necessary and central learnings in the curriculum of living. We must target our developmental and instructional efforts upon these important, personal world-making, capabilities and teach them things in ways that we know to work.

With great teachers to interpret and guide (Virgil to the learner's Dante) immersion in the world of the real as a preparation for deep, effective life participation is, IMHO, still, and by far, the more proven and the more consequential of the prerequisites for teaching profound things.