DIY College Metrics
Leslie Madsen-Brooks, The Clutter Museum, January 9, 2014
This really is a terrific post, filled with some really solid analysis (though the football player brain images were over the top). Like this, for example: "for every 100 first-time, degree-seeking undergraduates that begin their college careers at Boise State, 93 won’t graduate from that university in four years–and 71 won’t graduate within six." Makes you think twice about paying tuition. More...

Serendipity Without Stacks
Chloe Horning, ACRLog, January 7, 2014
I too remember the phrase "serendipity of the stacks", and on those occasions I browsed through a library I would experience it (that's how I discovered Nicholas Rescher)(but generally I kept my library visits goal-oriented and brief, because the dust on all the untouched books gave me headaches). More...

12.13.13
Karl Fisch, The Fischbowl, January 7, 2014
Karl Fisch, who will be well known to readers of this newsletter, teaches at Arapahoe High School where late last year a gunman killed a student before killing himself. This post is a detailed description of the event from his own perspective, with a remarkable clarity of recollection. It's interesting how many times he refers to his training for such situations. More...

180 MOOCs to Start the New Year (Is This the Crest of the Wave?)
Dan Colman, Open Culture, January 8, 2014
Remember last week, when MOOCs were dead? Even Dan Colman suggests that this may be the peak for MOOCs. But 180 courses doesn't seem dead to me. Sure, MOOCs will evolve over time (as they have since 2008). But the idea of open online learning is entrenched. More...

Why you can never recall your dreams
Vance Stevens, adVancEducation, January 8, 2014
My career as a published academic began in 1987-1988 with a couple of papers entitled 'Why Equi Fails' and 'Conditional Variability', both of which suggest that meaning is determined from context, and not merely content. More...

How did we end up with a centralized Internet for the NSA to mine?
Andy Oram, O'Reilly Radar, January 8, 2014
I covered the Wired article about NSA spying this week. Now Andy Oram writes, "my question today is: How did we get such industry concentration? Why is a network famously based on distributed processing, routing, and peer connections characterized now by a few choke points that the NSA can skim at its leisure?" I think this is a good question. More...

How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet
Steven Levy, Wired, January 7, 2014
Ultimately this story doesn't reveal that much, but it's a good summary of the damage done by the American NSA (National Security Agency) in a widespread spying program started during the Bush years and carried on under the Obama administration. More...

IBM reveals its top five innovation predictions for the next five years
Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, January 7, 2014
The prediction of most interestg to educators is 'the classroom will learn you'. "Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will help teachers make decisions about which students are at risk, their roadblocks, and the way to help them." Essentially correct – but what the article misses is that the ‘classroom’ will be wherever you happen to be, and won’t necessarily be some place you have to go to any more. More...

Breaking down the silos
Steve Wheeler, Learning with 'e's, January 7, 2014
I get asked the question "How would you create a MOOC in [pick a subject]" quite a bit. My response is, I wish we could think of online learning as going beyond subjects, to address entire domains or disciplines. More...

The Disappearance of Location-Based Learning
Assorted Stuff, Tim Stahmer, January 7, 2014
So Tim Stahmer cites a piece from a Wired article that says "the future of technology is not really location-based apps; it is about making location completely unimportant." And he rephrases: "the future of school is not really location-based learning; it is about making location completely unimportant." But... this is wrong. More...