Ethics in the Open
Rob Farrow, OER Research Hub, March 26, 2014
Ethics to me depends on epistemology - what counts as right and wrong depends in an important way on what we know and how we can know it. So I haven't said a lot about ethics and learning technology, because there is so little agreement yet as to what constitutes success and what we know about that. More...
How Does PISA Put the World at Risk
Yong Zhao, Creative, Entrepreneurial, , Global: 21st Century Education, March 26, 2014
Three-part series on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA):
What All the Outrage Over the Oculus Deal Says About Facebook, the Brand
Simon Dumenco, Ad Age, March 26, 2014
People are really upset that Oculus Rift (a prototype virtual-reality headset) has been acquired by Facebook. Oculus VR, the parent company, got its start on KickStarter via the contributions of some 9,522 backers (who receive none of the $2 billion purchase price). Now they and other supporters feel betrayed. More...
Coursera and edX Hire New Executives: What about online experience?
Phil Hill, e-Literate, March 25, 2014
As Phil Hill writes, there have been some leadership changes at the top of some online course providers. " First, Coursera announced they had hired Richard Levin, former president of Yale University, to be the company’s new CEO.... On the same day, coincidentally, edX announced they had hired Wendy Cebula as the company’s new president and chief operating officer." Hill comments that none of the eexecutives as any real experience in online learning. More...
Education, schooling and the digital ageSteve Wheeler, Learning with 'e's, March 20, 2014
Some good turns of phrase in this article. "Learning that is personalised and lifelong is almost always self-organised, self regulated and naturally has no course termination date.`I would add that this does not mean that it is endless, but rather that completion is based on the accomplishment of some task or objective, rather than on a schedule. More...
We’re Talking about Practice?Facebook Introduces ‘Hack,’ the Programming Language of the Future
Cade Metz, Wired, March 20, 2014
Interesting. I remember when Facebook was PHP (I actually saw the code once, because of a dropped format declaration). Their new programming language "lets programmers build complex websites and other software at great speed while still ensuring that their software code is precisely organized and relatively free of flaws... the new language is called Hack." It has some nice features - it's statically typed (which means you declare what all your variables are before you use them) but compiles at run-time, which means developers can immediately see the rsults of minor changes. More...
‘Closed’ v. ‘open’ systems of knowing
Scott Mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, March 20, 2014
Just to add yet another definition of 'open' to the mix: "A closed system is one in which the knowables are fixed. Examples of this kind of system would include any in which most of its answers are either yes or no, right or wrong, clearly and without any other possibility." Cited by Scott McLeod, this is from Teaching As a Subversive Activity. More...
Study
Freeman Murray, Jaaga, March 19, 2014
It's not online learning - students work on their program 40 hours a week in residence in Bangalore - but it draws from free and open online learning resources "by studying classes from CodeAcademy, TeamTreeHouse, CodeSchool, Udacity, Programmr.com, CodeLearn.org, Stanford, Harvard and MIT & Installing open source software and going through the tutorials." The tuition of 1 Lakh (100,000 Rupees) is deferred until after graduation, and studetns pay residential costs by doing freelance work. More...
Another Day, Another EdTech Giant Acquired
Rip Empson, TechCrunch, March 19, 2014
There's some churn in the background in the education technology industry as last week Renaissance Learning was acquired by a private equity firm for about a billion, and this week Skillsoft was acquired by another priovate equity firm for $2 billion. More...
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