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...
Google+ Stories
Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, May 30, 2014
Google+ is offering a new service: "Google+ Photos added a new feature called Stories. Google automatically groups some of your best photos and videos, based on the date and the place where they were taken, and creates animated stories you can edit and share with other people." This is relatively easy to do if all your photos are in the Google database (which of course is what Google wants). More...
Beyond the stack
Mike Loukides, O'Reilly Radar, May 30, 2014
One of the interesting 'behind the scenes' things about the new MOOC platforms is the way they're built: distributed computing. Coursera, for example, relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS). EdX's default distribution also uses AWS. More...
Untrusted
Alex Nisnevich, Games with Purpose, May 29, 2014
This is an interesting concept in learning games. The player is presented with a maze. So the idea is to escape. But to do so, you have to go into the Javascript that defines the maze and edit the code. More...
Designing Learning Tools — Introduction to Some Methodological Thoughts
Teemu Leinonen, FLOSSE Posse, May 29, 2014
Alex Hayes asked for my comments on this post following my digital research methodologies talk. Here's what I said about it back in 2010. More...
DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users
Mitchell, Mozilla Blog, May 29, 2014
One of the reason content companies have been creating their own browsers is to be able to implement in-browser digital rights management (DRM) instead of relying on plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. Open source browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, have no such incentive. More...
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