Three objections to learning objects

As I write this chapter, governments around the world are spending tens of millions of dollars (and euros) on initiatives that promise the development of learning objects (LOs), LO metadata and LO repositories to store both these data and objects. In more plain language, LOs can be said to refer to digital educational resources; metadata refers to their systematic description to facilitate searching and administration; and repositories represent online, searchable collections of these resources. Examples of initiatives underway include the Curriculum Online project being undertaken for schools in the UK at a cost of approximately US$80 million, and the Australian Learning Federation, a project similar in emphasis with a US$30 million budget. Similar projects are also being currently undertaken in Canada (eduSource, 2003; SchoolNet, 2003) the USA (Heal, 2003; iLumina, 2003) and by regional and international consortia (The Universal Brokerage Platform, 2003).