10 apps to use for the 2017-2018 term
Meris Stansbury, eCampus News, 2017/07/14
One of the things I do when I read a 'top 10 tech tools' article like this is to ponder which of the tools the list was designed to promote. In this case I'm guessing it's EdCast, self-styled as "the Netflix of Knowledge". We read, "EdCast’s app allows users to discover their most relevant learning opportunities, including those from co-workers, internal experts, formal and informal courses, external experts, MOOCs, and the internet." So, like Google then. More...

Making friends in MOOCs: It is No Fluke!
Curt Bonk, TravelinEdMan, 2017/07/14
Curt Bonk summarizes some of the work from a journal article on the subject (unfortunately he doesn't offer a link or even a title for the article) about whether people make friends in MOOCs. He seems to focus on whether instructors make friends, which seems to me to be totally beside the point - I would be looking for MOOC participants to make friends with each other. More...

Why Business Leaders Need to Read More Science Fiction
Eliot Peper, Harvard Business Review, 2017/07/14
I think everybody should read more science fiction, not just business leaders. I can certianly attest to its value, having read hundreds, indeed probably thousands, of science fictionm books. "Science fiction isn’t useful because it’s predictive. It’s useful because it reframes our perspective on the world. More...

Will to Power: Project-Based Learning in Post-WWII Japanese School Curriculum
Kazuyuki Nomura, British Educational Research Association, 2017/07/14
The translation to English in this post is a bit rough, but ther story it tells is interesting. The starting point is a 1998 curriculum reform in Japan. More...

How We Are Ruining America
David Brooks, New York Times, 2017/07/14
I don't think I belong to the 'we' in this column, but it is nonetheless telling, not only for the message, but also the source: "Status rules are partly about collusion, about attracting educated people to your circle, tightening the bonds between you and erecting shields against everybody else. We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there." Robert Pondiscio interprets this as an argument for explicitly teaching these to everyone. More...

Anchor Offers the Easiest Way to Publish Podcasts
Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, 2017/07/14
This post introduces us to Anchor, a podcast application that allows you to record and mix podcasts using your phone, then publish the result to audio subscription services. More...

What to Put in Your Makerspace (and How to Pay for It)
Teri Bauerly, EdSurge, 2017/07/13
The 'how to pay for it' part is 'apply for foundation grants'. This obviously won't work for everyone (especially outside the United States. More...

On Public Distrust, Colleges Could Learn From Journalism’s Mistakes
Clara Turnage, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017/07/13
The headline of this article makes a great point but unfortunately the article doesn't follow up, choosing instead to blame distrust on misunderstandings on the part of the public. For example: "When people talk about their confidence about higher education or the media, they don’t pause and think, ‘What would happen if we didn’t have them?’" OK, fine, but that's not what causes distrust. Yes, people focus on "their indiscretions and controversies," but in the case of news media there were just so many of them, ranging from a concentration of corporate ownership, a focus on the trivial, stage and altered images, abetting the misleading of the public, all the way to outright sexism and  racism. We didn't need apologists for the rich and powerful, which is why we began to distrust the press, and to believe we could live without them. More...

Academic publishing at a crossroads
Marc Couture, University Affairs, 2017/07/13
"The shift towards open access is an opportunity to reform academic publishing to better serve the public interest," says Marc Couture. But the indifference of academics and institutions continues to allow publishers to extract millions from the system. More...