Inside the Epic Online Space Battle That Cost Gamers $300,000
Bo Moore, Wired, February 13, 2014
The gaming world is still abuzz about a massive battle that took place in Eve, an online multiplayer roleplaying game (MMORPG). To put this into perspective, the battle was between two coalitions of forces and involved thousands of individual players. Because in-game assets can be bought and sold, it is possible to attach a price to the battle as well: $300,000. More...

The Learn Tracker
Edward Tanguay, The Learn Tracker, February 14, 2014
This is one of those projects I like a lot. Edward Tanguay has been watching MOOC videos at a terrific clip and has been posting summaries pn his website. More...

QuickWire: Pearson Offers a Badge Platform
Lawrence Biemiller, The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, February 14, 2014
Pearson is offering a commercial version of a badge platform that support's Mozilla's backpack standard. Dows anyone care to lay odds on how long it will be before Pearson adds proprietary commercial-only elements to its badge platform, in an effort to squeeze open source badges out of the picture? Ah, but maybe I'm being too cynical. More...

U.S. Government's 'bone-headed' decision can be fixed with paperwork, official says
Donald Gilliland, Penn Live, February 14, 2014
I'm wrestling internally with myself about how much I should care about Coursera being blocked in countries like Iran, Syria and Cuba. On the one hand, it's just internal US politics, and it doesn't matter to me whether some US company is blocked by its own government from sending free videos to the rest of the world. On the other hand, it's a law that I'm told wouldn't even apply if Coursera removed the login reqauirement from its service. More...

Google Glass: Recording at Schools
Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, Langwitches Blog, February 14, 2014
Eventually we'll be referring to these in generic terminology, 'wired glasses', say, but for now the technology is still called 'Google Glass' and shows no sign of a new name. More...

MOOC community?
Matthias Melcher, x28's new Blog, February 14, 2014
"Which is the 'community' of a MOOC?" asks Matthias Melcher. It's a good question. I'm pretty hesitant to use the term 'community' too loosely - it represents a lot of good things, like diversity and interaction and all that, but community also can represent bad things, like conformity, in-groups and cliques, exclusion and a narrow vision. More...

No More Snow Days?! Part 1
Amy Murin, Keeping Pace, February 14, 2014
The internet has been full of "snow days become e-learning days" over the last few days, not surprisingly. It's common for writers to try to seize on current events to draw readers to their posts. More...

Five myths about Moocs
Diana Laurillard, Times Higher Education, February 14, 2014
This came out about a month ago but according to my logs I haven't mentioned here yet, so here goes. First, let me quote Laurillard's five myths:

• the idea that 'content is free' in education
• that students can support each other
• that Moocs solve the problem of expensive undergraduate education
• that MOOCs address educational scarcity in emerging economies
• that Education is a mass customer industry

The essence of her criticism is that "a course format that copes with large numbers by relying on peer support and assessment is not an undergraduate education... it requires personalised guidance, which is simply not scalable in the same way."
I think we both agree that MOOCs - even cMOOCs - are not an undergraduate education. More...

The survival of Higher Education
Steve Wheeler, Learning with 'e's, February 14, 2014
Here are the links to Steve Wheeler's series on the survival of higher education:

(1): Changing Roles
(2): Changing Times
(3): The Social Web
(4): 5 Key Objectives
(5): Recommendations

The conclusion to this series is, sad to say, weepy. More...

The Other 21st Century Skills: Why Teach Them
Jackie Gerstein, User Generated Education, February 10, 2014
I've seen versions of this list previously and they bother me a little. The items are purportedly 'other' 21st century skills and include among them 'grit', 'resilience', 'self-regulation' and similar character traits. They read to me like a list of the traits poor people don't have (and which of course therefore explain why they are poor). I'm not doubting the value of such traits, but question their application in a list of "21st century skills". More...