States Issue Privacy Ultimatums to Education Technology Vendors
Stephen Noonoo, EdSurge, 2018/03/14
The main message in this article seems to be complains that it's really hard to comply with new laws protecting student data. More...

The rise of the experience industry on campus
Jonathan Finn, University Affairs, 2018/03/14
This post chronicles - and laments - the rise of the student experience industry on campus. " This industry brings together a conglomeration of staff, services, resources, programs, initiatives and facilities designed to enhance the student experience and guarantee students’ satisfaction." Jonathan Finn argues that this new emphasis detracts from the educational experience. "In the current university environment, a student’s experience is being prioritized over their education," he writes. More...

Four Tools for Leaning into the Future in Times of Rapid Change and Innovation
Bernard, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/03/14
The four tools are: 'missional sifting', consisting of "core ideals, practices, values, or philosophies"; 'transitional technologies' that "aid in progress toward what is usually a completely new mental and cultural construct", 'predicting the future', "a feel for key factors allows seeing educational technologies and innovations develop from a distance" (this is probably the strongest part of the article); and 'options for approaching the future', a combination of ignoring, preparing, predicting or creating the future. More...

The future of the distance education university
Mark Nichols, John Daniel, Ross Paul, António Teixeira, Tony Bates, EDEN, 2018/03/14
What would we lose if we lost open and distance universities? This question was posed at a panel hosted by EDEN last week and available as a video here. Sir John Daniel suggests we would lose the inclusiveness agenda, the idea that higher education should be offered wiodely across society. More...

What Makes an App Great for Kids Might Surprise You
Anya Kamenetz, Ad Age, 2018/03/13
It has a clickbait title and stock horror ("my son gave up a birthday party for an iphone! No!") as a lead-in but the observation inside this article is more interesting: "A better model for learning apps... may be less slot machine and more sandbox: a digital toy, not a digital game. More...

Betting 185 Million Dollars on EdTech
Victor Rivero, EdTech Digest, 2018/03/13
I found the interviewer a bit sycophantic (not not nearly as bad as I've seen on some business channels) but the conversation as a whole with Owl Ventures’ Tory Patterson is interesting and, to a degree, eye-opening. The $185 million refers to the amount of investment capital Owl raised in its second fund offering (the first was around $100 million, in 2014). More...

Next Generation L&D: From ‘Learning’ To ‘Performance’
David James, Looop, 2018/03/13

What are outcomes? The real need isn't learning and development per se. More...

Accessibility as default
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2018/03/13
It makes sense to plan for accessibility by defailt, but the examples offered here show how complex in implementation this actually is. "When writing presentation slides, extra attention to punctuation can make an enormous difference for those who need to listen to the text," writes Alastair Creelman. More...

Review of Ethically Aligned Design
Stephen Downes, Mar 13, 2018, HCT Reading Club, Ottawa, via Jabber

In this presentation I review Ethically Aligned Design by The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, focusing on the section on classical ethics in autonomous and intelligent systems. More...

Crazy Microsoft Is The Best Microsoft
Mark Wilson, Co.Design, 2018/03/12
Back in 2010 EA released a hockey game for the Nintendo Wii that featured an actual hockey stick as a controller. It was the greatest thing ever, and I spent hours - days! - standing in the dining room developing my career from Peewee to Pro. They didn't support it the following year and I lost interest. More...