Brilliance struck. We call it Canvas Catalog.
Matt Goodwin, Canvas by Instructure, May 30, 2014
Instructure is launching a new product called Canvas Catalog, "a white-label platform that enables any institution, government entity, university or K-12 school to create a branded index of online courses." This means, according to the blog post, "any organization using Canvas now has the ability to build a marketplace or storefront for their courses. This gives learners the ability to register, enroll, pay (if that’s your thing), and start taking courses without all the typical hassle." What I'd like to see from this service is an RSS feed - free courses should be freely syndicated (here's a sample RSS-Events file and the RSS-Events schema is available here). More...

Google+ Stories
Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, May 30, 2014

Google+ is offering a new service: "Google+ Photos added a new feature called Stories. Google automatically groups some of your best photos and videos, based on the date and the place where they were taken, and creates animated stories you can edit and share with other people." This is relatively easy to do if all your photos are in the Google database (which of course is what Google wants). More...

Beyond the stack
Mike Loukides, O'Reilly Radar, May 30, 2014

One of the interesting 'behind the scenes' things about the new MOOC platforms is the way they're built: distributed computing. Coursera, for example, relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS). EdX's default distribution also uses AWS. More...

Untrusted
Alex Nisnevich, Games with Purpose, May 29, 2014
This is an interesting concept in learning games. The player is presented with a maze. So the idea is to escape. But to do so, you have to go into the Javascript that defines the maze and edit the code. More...

Designing Learning Tools — Introduction to Some Methodological Thoughts
Teemu Leinonen, FLOSSE Posse, May 29, 2014

Alex Hayes asked for my comments on this post following my digital research methodologies talk. Here's what I said about it back in 2010. More...

DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users
Mitchell, Mozilla Blog, May 29, 2014

One of the reason content companies have been creating their own browsers is to be able to implement in-browser digital rights management (DRM) instead of relying on plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. Open source browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, have no such incentive. More...

Three Trends Worth Watching for Continuing Education Leaders
Cathy Sandeen, Higher Education Today, May 29, 2014

All three of these trends are very likely, I think. Here's the list:

• Tiered service models at universities
• Analytics and data-driven management
• Alternative credentials

To a certain degree, all of these are already present in institutions or in learning technology; what we will probably see over the next few years is widespread adoption. More...

Internet Trends 2014
Mary Meeker, Business Insider, May 31, 2014
Mary Meeker's annual state of the internet report has come out and once again it is probably the most insightful snapshot of the state of play as you're going to see. My only complaint is that at 165 slides, it's too short. More...

Ergo
Ergo, May 28, 2014

Most philosophy publications are closed-access, so I haven't really kept up, but this week markes the launch of Ergo, an open-access philosophy journal. More...

Building a Knowmad Society in Ecuador
John W. Moravec, Education Futures, May 28, 2014

I think this is an ambitious plan and wonder how it will impact the work that follows: "The project seeks to encourage horizontalized, peer-to-peer exchange and the development of activities that will promote extending learning beyond formal education. Nine three-day workshops will cover each regional division of Ecuador. An online platform will facilitate further discussion, and the outputs from the workshops and online activities will be fed into a data analysis process that will inform the creation of a white paper on transforming Ecuadorian education for a 'knowmadic' society."

Do also read the comment that follows the article. More...