The IFLA Internet Manifesto
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has started circulating emails to various mailing lists asking for feedback on its Manifesto on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation. More...

Universities To Be Sued Over Music Downloads
Though the reporting is no doubt factually correct, this article from Britain's Times Online is nonetheless a skewed and misleading piece (and shame on them for doing it). In the second paragraph we see an unsubstantiated, highly debatable, and yet unqualified assessment of losses suffered by the music industry. More...

Terms and conditions apply - what went wrong?
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2018/03/28

More on the same issue. More...

How American Media Failed (at) Democracy, Society, and Reality
Umair Haque, Medium, 2018/03/28
What I want to ask by posting this item is whether educational institutions are passing this basic test. Not just American institutions, but all educational institutions. More...

Universal Design for Learning Is About Access
Leonardo Tissot, Thomas Tobin, e-learn, 2018/03/28
When I was reading this article I clicked on the option to make the text size larger. It's a simple thing, but for a person with poor eyesight it's significant. This is the idea of Universal Design for Learning (UDL); it "allows many people never to have to say, 'please treat me differently.'" There's a funny little digression in the middle of the article where the author also addresses learning styles - after all, UDL allows differentiation, which learning style sceptics say you should never do. But UDL points to the obvious: some people need to be accommodated, sometimes permanently, sometimes just for the moment. More...

Creative Know How: Competencies for Student Success in a World of Change
Grace Belfiore, Dave Lash, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/03/28
The five competencies discussed in this article show up briefly in the middle of the piece, but otherwise the bulk of the material promotes the MyWays framework as a whole. The five competencies, for the record, are: critical thinking & problem solving; creativity & entrepreneurship; communication & collaboration; information, media & technology skills; and practical life skills. More...

Microsoft Education and Open Up Resources announce partnership to deliver top rated math curriculum
Microsoft Education Blog, 2018/03/28
I don't whether the the curriculum is actually "top rated" or whether that's just marketing bile (I suspect the latter) but what's important here is that Microsoft is integrating "full-course OER curricula, standards-aligned, and provided for free to promote instructional equity" into its OneNote application. More...

The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark
Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker, 2018/03/30
This is a really good article, cogent and clear, describing Andy Clark's philosophy and theory of cognition. It also takes us through some side-trips involving David Chalmers and Karl Friston. But the focus is on Clark and his theories concerning the extended mind - the idea that the mind isn't just what's in our head but also incorporates the conceptual and physical world around us. More...

Collaboration and the creation of a new journalism commons
Carlos Martínez de la Serna, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/03/30

I think that a case could be made that a similar cooperation is beginning to develop in education (albeit at a slower pace). More...

6 creative ways to solve problems with Linux containers and Docker
Sean Kane, O'Reilly, 2018/03/30
I've mentioned things like Docker and virtualization from time to time but haven't exactly addressed why these things would be interesting. More...