Hitting Reset, Knewton Tries New Strategy: Competing With Textbook Publishers
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2017/12/08
Remember Knewton? Pundits loved it. It positioned itself as "the world’s leading adaptive learning technology provider with the mission of bringing personalized education to the world" and drew some $157 million in funding. Now they're executing a pivot "along with mounting criticism that its founding CEO, Jose Ferreira, overhyped its technology." Now the company is trying to compete with publishers. More...

A Cengage Buffet
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/12/08
"The new offer, called Cengage Unlimited, will give students access to more than 20,000 Cengage products across 70 disciplines and 675 course areas for $119.99 a semester." That's more than twice what the going rate has been, so I'm expecting this price to drop quickly. But it reflects a trend that we've seen in other industries - mustic, for examplem with Spotify, or video with Netflix. More...

Towards an Ethical Framework for #OpenRecognition
Serge Ravet, Learning Futures, 2017/12/08
This is an intelligent and well-thought out account of the ethical implications of open badges. Open badges can be used for good, or they can be used to perpetuate discrimination or to reify the advantages of an already privileged group. "Open Badges are not innocuous," writes Serge Ravet. More...

How to reach high achievement through listening skills
Jennifer Abrams, eSchool News, 2017/12/05
Listening is a type of literacy and one I didn't learn properly (if at all!) until adulthood. t was part of a self-study course I took at Texas Instruments in 1981 (the same one that taight the feel-want-willing style of communications, called "On the Way Up"). More...

Citations and the fallacy of division
Cameron Neylon, Wonkhe, 2017/12/05
I've seen various promotion criteria worded "candidates will need 100 publications..." as though that were a measure of anything real (it also demanded a certain H-index as well). More...

Is Private Education in Africa the Solution to Failing Education Aid?
Danish Faruqui, Sudeep Laad, Mary Abdo, Priyanka Thapar , Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017/12/05
The answer the author provides is "yes". But the actual answer is, of course, "no". Let me explain how private education offers a "solution": it charges fees to prospective students. This means that it avoids the messy need to teach the really poor; it teaches those who can afford to pay. More...

The world’s slowest, most boring bus simulator finally has a VR version
Sam Machkovech, Ars Technica, 2017/12/05
Stuff like this is what makes the internet great. "After roughly 22 years, one of the worst video games of all time, Desert Bus, finally has a sequel. In very good news for anybody who hears "notorious game's sequel" and flinches, this new take, dubbed Desert Bus VR, is now completely free to own for PC gamers, whether they own a virtual reality headset or not. More...