26 octobre 2018

CETIS Quarterly Newsletter
A new initiative from CETIS, this quarterly newsletter will be usefully read by busy people without time even to read OLDaily. But I suspect that the CETIS staff will have more difficulty writing the second issue than the first, as in the first the topics covered the broad range of e-learning (assessment, accessibility, content and metadata) and drew upon developments over the recent years, not months. More...

Moulin Ching
It was three years ago I wrote this, three years ago I entered it in some writing contest, lost, and filed it away. I don't handle rejection well - even if it could be called writing only by the widest stretch of the imagination. More...

Open Access Jeopardises Academic Publishers, Reed Chief Warns
According to the chief executive of Reed Elsevier, "The rise of open access publishing of scientific research could jeopardise the entire academic publishing industry." But if you ask me, if an industry is threatened by me sharing something I created with other people, then this industry is already on a very shaky foundation and probably doesn't merit special measures needed to prop it up. More...

Collaboration First, Then Knowledge Management
This item has been picked up by a number of writers and seems to be worth sharing. It makes me think of a common criticism of knowledge management systems, that they are a solution in search of a problem. After all, if people simply call up a friend or fire off a fax, how does a knowledge management system helps. More...

Grants More Than Offset Soaring University Tuition
The gist of this article is that university tuitions are set in such a way as to maximize grants, and that the increased tuition rates are more than offset by student aid programs. "It is a shell game, pure and simple," says King Alexander, president of Murray State University in Kentucky. But other writers are critizing the study on which the article is based. "The analysis doesn't include the more than 20 percent increase in average tuition rates for 2003 and 2004," argues Stan Jones, Indiana's higher-education commissioner. More...

The Democratization of Cultural Criticism
The bulk of this article is devoted to a comparison of criticism today and a half century ago, deflecting the observation that today's critics are somehow inferior to those of yore. The good bit comes in the last paragraph. More...

Thinking About Interaction Design for Online News Delivery
Very good article, with implications obviously not limited to online journalism. "Productive interaction is a recasting of the author/designer's position in relation to the audience. Instead of laying out a linear narrative in an enveloping experience, the productive interaction designer frames an exploration of a meaning space, making sure the audience has the affordances to create their own 'take.'" More...

Connectivism: Informing Distance Education Theory, Pedagogy and Research (Critical Review)
Kelli Ralph, Technology for Teaching & Learning, May 30, 2014
This is a good post reflecting on George Siemens's 2004 Connectivism article, discussing both the theoretical infliences and the points where the paper establishes new ground. More...

The Future Of Online Ed Isn't Heading Where You Expect
Anya Kamenetz, NPR, May 30, 2014
Short article with what is (I think) important news: "Trinidad and Tobago. Its government this week announced the creation of a National Knowledge Network to promote free online learning in partnership with Khan Academy and Coursera." I think we can ignore the bit about the providers - these can change over time, while the idea of a national networks for free learning is something that can endure, and eventually, become entrenched. More...

Brilliance struck. We call it Canvas Catalog.
Matt Goodwin, Canvas by Instructure, May 30, 2014
Instructure is launching a new product called Canvas Catalog, "a white-label platform that enables any institution, government entity, university or K-12 school to create a branded index of online courses." This means, according to the blog post, "any organization using Canvas now has the ability to build a marketplace or storefront for their courses. This gives learners the ability to register, enroll, pay (if that’s your thing), and start taking courses without all the typical hassle." What I'd like to see from this service is an RSS feed - free courses should be freely syndicated (here's a sample RSS-Events file and the RSS-Events schema is available here). More...