Government Adviser Says Stop Investing in Systems that Don’t Work
Press Release, Online Educa Berlin, 2017/12/11
According to this press release summarizing a talk at Online Educa Berlin, Pasi Sahlberg argued that education ministers in England, Australia and the United States are continuing to invest in the GERM (Global Educational Reform) model, in spite of evidence that it doesn't work. More...

A repository platform for OERs
Panagiotis Stasinakis, Open Education Platform, 2017/12/11
The result was an interesting compendium of resouces, including:

• Kolibri, which also offers a learning management system component. 
• WordPress blogs, eg. this one, where each OER or group of resources is released as a blog post
• DSpace, with search functionality, categories, OER's meta data etc., but tricky to use
• Tsugi, by Chuck Severence, with integration into LMS systems like Sakai, Moodle, Canvas and work in Google Classroom
• Edu-sharing, developed in Germany
• Gitbook.com and Github.com to write, store, and share OER content, also Github at P2PU, and also github/jekyll
• OER Content Buffet - they use angular, and they offered to send the code if you write an email
• HackMD - a realtime, multiplatform collaborative markdown note editor
• Curriki provides the ability to create Groups for Discussions and create Group related and/or specific resources

Note that the annotations are from the posts on the discussion list, not from me. More...

Care, Communication, Learner Support: Designing Meaningful Online Collaborative Learning
Heather A. Robinson, Whitney Kilgore, Scott J. Warren, online learning, 2017/12/11
The authors writem, "The three main themes that emerged from this study were: the importance of online communication approaches, challenges and supports for online collaborative learning, and that care is at the core of online learner support" (note that the abstract expresses this quite differently). More...

Wherefore Art Thou MOOC?: Defining Massive Open Online Courses
Stephanie J. Blackmon, Claire H. Major , online learning, 2017/12/11
I don't think this paper really succeeded in its stated objective of defining massive open online courses. What we do get is a sense that there are many interpretations of the form, and that if you sample mostly the xMOOC form, you'll find that xMOOC properties (like instructor-centeredness) predominate. More...

Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media.
Duncan J. Watts, David M. Rothschild, Columbia Journalism Review, 2017/12/11
One of the more salient stories this year has revolved around the phenomenon of fake news and (via fake news) managing and massaging public perceptions. The gist of this article is that, while social media manipulation is a problem that cannot be taken lightly, it would be misleading to attribute the U.S. election results (and the Brexit vote, etc.) to social media. Instead, write the authors of this report, we should look at mainstream media. More...

MOOC Trends in 2017: Content Paywalls
Dhawal Shah, Class Central, 2018/01/19
Class Central has been running a series of articles on MOOCs in review in 2017. It reads to me like a description of "how MOOCs stopped being MOOCs in 2017". The articles cover content paywalls, MOOC monetization, and corporate learning. But the series also attests to the continued strength of MOOCs in general. More...

No, machines can’t read better than humans
James Vincent, The Verge, 2018/01/19
This is a counter to a post published earlier this week suggesting that robots can now read better than humans. Technically, the headline wasn't wrong, but the problem lies in the test. "The test is actually a dataset, compiled by a group of Stanford university computer scientists," explains the author. More...

Twitter EDU
David Truss, 2018/01/19
David Truss has published an eBook on using Twitter in education. According to the blurb, "If you follow along and tweet as you learn, this book will make your entry into Twitter much easier, and enjoyable! It has best practice tips, tricks and explanations that will assist you in building a great network much faster than you could do on your own." The book can be downloaded for free. More...

Why I Left Silicon Valley, EdTech, and “Personalized” Learning
Paul Emerich, Inspired, 2018/01/18
This is a post describing a teacher's experiences "opening a brand new micro-school and to work on technology tools that were intended to personalize my students’ learning." It was AltSchool, the Silicon Valley startup where Emerich worked for three years, leaving last June. The company changed course last year from running schools to selling software. More...