with flying cars when he purchased and piloted anAerocar on his TV show (“Chuck,” 2008). Withsimilarly futuristic vision, Stanford philosopher PatrickSuppes predicted in a 1966 Scientific American articlethat “in a few more years millions of schoolchildrenwill have access to what Philip of Macedon’s sonAlexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the personalservices of a tutor as well-informed and responsive asAristotle” (Suppes, 1966, p. 201). Unfortunately, bothvisions of the future have proven too optimistic. Thesky is not filled with flying cars and every child is notblessed with the services of their own private“Aristotle.”Why haven’t our most visionary dreams beenrealized? Why hasn’t technology dramaticallyimproved learning? The promised technology-driventransformation of education seems tantalizingly justout of reach. We’re left to ask, metaphorically speak-ing, “Dude, where’s my flying car?(!)” We argue herethat educational reformers and academic technologystrategists are waiting in vain for the promisedrevolution in teaching and learning because we haveconsistently, almost single-mindedly, used technologyto automate the past instead of employing our bestthinking and efforts to create a new future. Specifically,otherwise well-intentioned reformers have missedopportunities to create learning content and tools thatare open, modular, and interoperable.Because “openness” has taken on various andsometimes ideological meanings, it is appropriate for usto clarify what we mean by the term “open.” Our intentis to describe tools, processes, and frameworks thatinteroperate in an open fashion to create and delivercontent that is itself accessible, flexible, and repurpos-able. We do not hold that tools or content need to be“free” (as in “no-cost”) to be open. For example, aclosed source, commercially provided tool might havean open architecture that is extensible via APIs or Webservices. In contrast, an open source tool might be veryproprietary in terms of the kinds of applications anddatabases with which it will interface; thereby creatingcontent that is quite closed. We contend that the prioris legitimately more “open” than the latter. The natureof openness that matters most to learners, teachers, andthe institutions that support them is the ability toquickly and easily find, customize, and implement theright tool or content for specific learning contexts. Bythis view, open source software or open content (i.e.,freely distributed under a Creative Commons license)is not inherently better than or normatively superior tocommercially provided and licensed tools or content.Supporting effective, dynamic learning is the primaryaim—the nature of the tools used and their source areboth of secondary importance.This being said, we believe that openness, includingthe kind of radical new openness championed by theopen source and open content communities, is aMichael D. Bush is Associate Professor of French andInstructional Psychology and Technology and AssociateDirector of the Center for Language Studies at Brigham YoungUniversity, Provo, Utah (e-mail: [email protected]). Hehas organized four iterations of the ID+SCORM Symposiumat BYU and is participating as a member of LETSI in theformulation of requirements for SCORM 2.0. Jonathan D.Mott is Assistant to the Academic Vice President–AcademicTechnology and Adjunct Professor of InstructionalPsychology and Technology at Brigham Young University(e-mail: [email protected]). He is responsible for theimplementation and evaluation of educational technology atBYU.IntroductionThe 1960s was a decade of upheavals, but it was also adecade of dreams, full of grand visions of a betterworld. At the beginning of that momentous era, actorBob Cummings helped fuel the national fascinationEducational visionaries and reformers have longpredicted a significant transformation of teaching andlearning that would be facilitated by technology,essentially providing every learner with the equivalentof a personal tutor. Technology implementations ineducation, however, have consistently fallen short ofachieving these lofty aims. The authors argue that thisfailure stems from a penchant to implement technologyin ways that automate that past. Instead, we mustchampion learning technologies that are learner-centric and malleable, such that they address theneeds of individual learners and can take advantageof the power of network effects. Only then will werealize the long-awaited transformation.The Transformationof Learningwith TechnologyLearner-Centricity, Contentand Tool Malleability,and Network EffectsMichael D. BushJonathan D. MottCopyrighted 2009 by Educational Technology Magazine, scheduled for publication in the March-April 2009 edition, and not forgeneral public distribution until March 1, 2009.EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY/March–April 20094critical enabling factor in the transformation andimprovement of learning. Imagine a world in whichanyone, anywhere, could use exactly the right toolsand content at the right time, seamlessly with the othertools and content they already use, to solve theirteaching and learning challenges. Can there be anydoubt that the prospects for online teaching andlearning would improve? Accordingly, we believe thatit is crucial to promote openness combined with theprinciples of modularity and interoperability tofacilitate the development of new tools andmethodologies for reusing, remixing, and mashing-up content to achieve learning goals in ways neverthought possible.By leveraging such ideas, teachers and learners canmore fully take advantage of the network effect intechnology by enabling learning communities. Signifi-cantly increasing the output in learning content has thepotential to fundamentally alter the learning landscape,just as the Web in general has changed the informationlandscape. Finally, we argue that perpetuating teacher-centric, didactic models of education prevents funda-mental, paradigm-altering changes in learning andaccompanying role changes. We conclude thatteachers and academic leaders must embrace theseprinciples—namely openness, modularity, interoper-ability, the network effect, and learner-centricity—forthe full potential of learning technology to becomewidely available, usable, and affordable.The magnitude of this potential is illustrated byresearch from the 1980s that ascertained the value ofone-to-one tutoring (Bloom, 1984). Benjamin Bloom,perhaps best remembered for his