Does ‘discovery learning’ prepare Alberta students for the 21st century or will it toss out a top tier education system?
Tristin Hopper, National Post, March 4, 2014
The National Post has never been one to objectively present a story, and it doesn't do so here, but reading between the lines (and a so-called "prominent critic of discovery learning") we have the good news here that Alberta officials have "vowed that the “traditional” teaching methods of textbooks-and-chalkboards will be dead, replaced instead by a unstructured system design to craft 'engaged thinkers,' 'ethical citizens' and 'entrepreneurial spirits.'" I'm not sure why the newspaper would be so blatant in its support of the older approach (unless it's to sell textbooks). More...

University of the People gains accreditation
Chris Parr, Times Higher Education, March 4, 2014

It's far from free, but a University of the People education will cost much less than at a traditional university, and now the degrees are accredited. More...

Writing with Expresso
Doug Peterson, doug - off the record, March 4, 2014

Doug Peterson writes about Expresso, an interesting writing analytics project created by Mikhail Panko, a PhD student in computational neuroscience (you can see the open source for yourself on GitHub.) Give it a few paragraphs of your own writing and it will analyize it for weak verbs, filler words, negations, modals, passive voice, and more. More...

Today's eLearning: Michael Allen & Experts Say "Enough is Enough"
Michael Allen, Allen Interactions, March 4, 2014
Someone will have to wake me up when the date finally rolls around, but on March 13 Michael Allen and three others will release the "serious e-learning manifesto". They are rallying, they say, against bad e-learning design. More...

Daniel C. Dennett: The De-Darwinizing of Cultural Change
Daniel C. Dennett, Edge, March 4, 2014

I don't agree with everything Daniel Dennett says, but what he says is never trivial (in the way, say, Jerry Fodor or David K. Lewis are trivial) - the postulates he offer require serious thought, because they are genuine possibilities, and not just semantical tricks. More...

U.S. Education Department Issues Guidance on Student Data Privacy
Benjamin Herold, Education Week, March 3, 2014

As summarized by Benjamin Herold, "the U.S. Department of Education released new guidance Tuesday on the proper use, storage, and security of the massive amounts of data being generated by new, online educational resources." The guidelines are relatively complete, referring to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as a baseline, identifying what information may be disclosed, and looking at exceptions (such as click-wrap licenses). More...

Nuevo servicio de Google Meet Oppia bloqueado para Cuba
Raidell Avello Martínez, Tú puedes usar las TIC, March 3, 2014

So it looks like Oppia, which I mentioned last week, doesn't exactly allow anyone to create a new interactive learning experience. In particular, it doesn't allow people in Cuba to do this (nor probably in a few other countries, notably Iran, Syria and Sudan). More...

Textbook Publishers Push to Provide Full Digital-Learning Experience
Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014

Pretty good overview of the state of the publishing market with respect to digital textbooks. The not so secret undercurrent: they'd like to move the LMS right out of the picture and "own the whole screen" if they could. More...

Getty Images allows free embed of 35 million photographs
Timothy Vollmer, Creative Commons, March 8, 2014

It's not quite the same as licensing the content for reuse, of course, since the user has to be online to view embedded photos, and the photos are send froma Getty server, which means that websites can ensure speed of delivery, and that the Getty server logs all transactions. More...

Cyberbullying on the rise at Canadian universities, studies show
Vivian Luk, CTV News, March 12, 2014
Like everyone else, I suppose, I have to deal with attempts to intimidate and bully that come my way through social media (you can probably see my frustration with these unprovoked attacks show through at times). More...