By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ed Tech Investment & Exit Report – 2014 On Track for New Funding Record
Unattributed, CB Insights, 2014/09/26
Interesting set of statistics related to venturer capital investments in education technology. The first overall trend is that money is pouring into the sector at a record pace. Second, the list of must well-funded ed tech companies might surprise you - leading the way are companies like Open English, TutorGroup and lynda.com. "Open English is an online school created to reinvent the English-language-learning experience targeted towards Spanish and Portuguese speakers in the Americas. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A National Look at Student Data Privacy Legislation
Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education, 2014/09/25

This underscores the importance of data privacy in education: in the United States, "state policymakers introduced 110 bills on student data privacy in 36 states this session, with 30 of them passing both houses and 24 being signed into law, according to an analysis by the Data Quality Campaign." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 16 reasons why this research will change how you look at news consumption
Paul Bradshaw, Onloine Journalism Blog, 2014/09/25

This is not a listicle (list-based article) even though the headline suggests it is. The '16' in the title refers to 16 different ways of using news media, and the report compares them across different dimensions: engagement, amount remembered, and the like. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Task Force on Flexible Education publishes its interim report
Report, Simon Fraser University, 2014/09/24
I found this item after following an item noting that David Porter is leaving his position as Executive Director of BC Campus, a position he has held since 2003. He is also involved with the Task Force on Flexible Education at Simon Fraser University. That's the organization that released this interim report (25 page MS Word document). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The MOOC Misstep and the Open Education Infrastructure
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2014/09/23
Useful and interesting article by David Wiley saying some of the things that needed to be said without pulling any punches: "The horrific corruption perpetrated by the Udacity, Coursera, and other copycat MOOCs is to pretend that the last forty years never happened. Their modus operandi has been to copy and paste the 1969 idea of open entry into online courses in 2014."
He then proposes that we be clear about defining a sense of 'open' that is "worth the name". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Solving the Textbook Cost Crisis Through OER
Nicole Allen, Slideshare, 2014/09/23
Good slide deck from Nicole Allen, who has been representing SPARC recently. "The cost of college textbooks has grown to a point that virtually every campus is now seeking solutions. While many institutions have successfully reduced costs for students through stop-gap measures such as rental programs, lending libraries and licensing deals, the greatest potential for permanently solving the problem lies in Open Educational Resources (OER)." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A shift toward efficacy
John Watson, Keeping Pace, 2014/09/23