How It All Comes Together: A Cloud-Based Enrollment System in Action
Bob Burke, Arthur Mahoney, EdTech, January 7, 2014
There are many questions I would ask of this article (like, why do we even have an 'admissions process' in the age of free online learning and cloud technology) but I'll focus on one thing that really stands out as a fundamentasl flaw in many such scenarios. More...

Yao Ming joins hands with VIPABC
English.news.cn, January 4, 2014
The world is embracing e-learning. This is from a single issue of my Google Alert on the topic:

India: Kerala's e-learning initiative should be taken across country, says PM, Firstpost. "Lauding Kerala's pioneering efforts in achieving total e-literacy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said reducing the digital divide was vital to improve the lives of common people across the country." See also: Higher Ed sector will get focus, Indian Express. More...

Proliferation of researcher profiles
David Davies, David Davies' Weblog, January 4, 2014
As a researcher I am asked to contribute to these researcher profile networks from time to time. My response has been, to be honest, lukewarm. What good, I wonder, is being served by a proliferation of ensiled researcher profile lists? Yes, it would be good to have a single list of my research outputs. But there are conflicts in formats and presentation. More...

Create a Personal Publication Archive with Open Journal Systems (OJS)
Wesley Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, January 4, 2014
Apropos of the post on research profiles (see below) this item on the use of Open Journal Systems to create a personal publications archive is intriguing. One of the advantages is a very standardized representation of personal publications, which can be shared. OJS also provides a lot of administration features, so you can store drafts, get people to review your work, and more. More...

Academic Jibberish
Stephen Krashen, SKrashen, January 6, 2014
One thing I strive for is clarity in my writing. It's because I'm lazy - I find it a lot easier to write something that is short and clear than to couch ideas in a cloak of academic jargon. But I still have to read it. And I agree, "A great deal of academic writing is incomprehensible even to others in the same area of scholarship." Now the situation isn't as bad as portrayed by McLeans, which focuses on a blog called LOL My Thesis, where students submit plain English versions of their thesis topics. More...

Getting Around International Content Restrictions
Alec Couros, Open Thinking, January 6, 2014
I spent a little time over the holidays trying to set up a personal VPN on my website, but it wasn't as straightforward as it looked. But I have uses for such a service - not just accessing Pandora and Hulu and Spotify but also securing my email and other online transactions. I might find it worth my while to do what Alec Couros does, and to pay around $70 for a hosted VPN (I've been hesitant to do this because I'm hesitant to trust unknown online vendors with credit card payments). More...

Media literacy tops traditional education in school smoking-prevention efforts
Unattributed, Medical News Today, January 17, 2014
This is an interesting result, I think. "While traditional anti-smoking education focuses on health effects of smoking and resisting peer and other social influences, media literacy empowers participants to analyze and evaluate portrayals of tobacco use in media." Hit students with anti-smoking messages, and it's just one more bit of propaganda. More...

Rethinking School Privatization in Sweden
snickerdoodle, Metafilter, January 2, 2014
Metafilter thread, introduced as follows: "20 years ago, Sweden passed a series of reforms that encouraged privatization of its schools. In addition to making it easier to create new schools, the new laws made it legal for private, profit-seeking companies to open schools. More...

Udacity 2013 Yearbook
Brenna Van Norman, Udacity Blog, January 2, 2014
After its late-year 'pivot' and Sebastian Thrun's "we make lousy software" remark, this is actually printed in the Udacity blog: "2013 was a great year with a lot of new milestones." So how is the pivot going. More...

The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography For Marketing Research in Online Communities
Robert V. Kozinets, Journal of Marketing Research, January 3, 2014
So here's an interesting question I got in my email: is netnography a real thing? I have to confess that I don't know, as it's totally new to me. So what is netnography? Harrison Hayes writes, "In Netnography, online observations and interactions are valued as a cultural reflection that yields deep human understanding. Like in Ethnography, Netnography is naturalistic, immersive, descriptive, intuitive, adaptable, and focused on context." Robert Kozinets makes clear its relation to consumer research. and cites people like Sherry Turkle. More...