“Education is broken, somebody should do something”
David Kernohan, followersoftheapocalyp.se, September 11, 2013

Good post by David Kernohan analyzing the misrepresentation of MOOCs by media. He writes, "“Open” was the first organ that we lost. From a nuanced and specific position in the world of the open educational resource, it is a word reduced to a synonym for two senses of free – free of cost (free as in beer) and free of prerequisites (free as in ride). Freedom, of course, is another word for nothing left to lose – yet somehow we have managed to lose it anyway."

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Google teams up with Harvard and MIT to help boost free online courses
Casey Newton, The Verge, September 11, 2013

Marc Canter asked me what I thought about this, and that's how I found out about it. "Google said today that it will develop software for edX, a nonprofit created by Harvard and MIT that solicits and distributes online courses for free... he idea is to spur development of so-called massive online open courses, building what edX's president told Slate could become 'a YouTube for MOOCs." My response to Marc? Mostly, it's a case of the big organizations staking their turf (and trampling. The danger for them is that MOOCs will be (a0 something that don't really resemble videos, and instead resemble RSS readers, and (b) something created by learners for each other, rather than by publishers to be sold as consumables. Imagine what YouTube would look like without any user-created videos. That's what a YouTube of MOOCs will look like, unless something significant changes.

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The silent majority - why are MOOC forums counterproductive?
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, September 11, 2013

It's interesting that this article addresses a lesson we learned in the first few weeks of our MOOC in 2008 - the centralized discussion forum is not a good tool for a course of thousands of people. It's funny that Alastair Creelman would say "There is of course no patented answer to this problem but maybe we should think at least twice before launching a MOOC with a common discussion forum in the middle." Though we haven't patented it, we have, I think, andwered it - have people contribute from their own forum (their own blog, their own space) and connect them using the course software.

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When your teacher is a robot
Carmel Deamicis, Panodaily, September 11, 2013

Recent acquisitions by Desire2Learn raise the question of whether they are building a robot teacher, according to this article. "In January, it acquired Degree Compass, which is a software that helps students pick classes by using their transcript data to predict how well they will do. A few months later it bought Wiggio, which is Yammer for schools, giving a space for student organizations to collaborate on documents, chat, and share calendars... a few months later...  Knowillage Systems, Inc. Knowillage makes LeaP, an artificial intelligence that can sit on top of a learning management system. LeaP tracks individual K-12 grade student’s performance through online assignments and quizze." The author's take is a bit melencholy: "It’s a little sad that our educational system is so strapped that we need machines to give students individualized care... [but] data analytics programs like LeaP have gotten a hell of a lot closer to the Jetson’s robot teacher idea than the actual robots currently on the market."

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Reclaiming the Original Vision of MOOCs
George Lorenzo, Campus Technology, September 11, 2013

Article on reclaiming the original post that winds up focusing on interactions, especially video. Odd use of a modality to make the point (because they could just write Cormier and ask if he does agree): "Cormier would likely agree. 'People are increasingly saying, ''I want to see people,' he said. '''I want to see who they are. I want to see what they look like. I want to know if they are smiling. I want to know if they are being sarcastic. I want to know a little bit more about them. I want a more human experience.'" I think we are going to see the need for that more and more as we go on with this.'"

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Innovating Pedagogy
Mike Sharples, Open University, September 11, 2013

This report, produced by the Open University, reads and feels a lot like the Horizon reports. "To produce it, a group of academics at The Open University compiled a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice." Heading the list of ten selected innvoations is MOOCs. Here's the take on MOOCs: "MOOCs can claim a special status at the moment in innovating pedagogy: they bring together other innovation." Also in the list: analytics, badges, crowd learning, and digital scholarship, among others.

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Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework
Beth Davis, Data Cookbook, September 11, 2013

Definitely worth noting: "The PAR Framework is a non-profit multi-institutional data mining collaborative comprised of two-year, four-year, public, proprietary, traditional and progressive institutions contributing their anonymized student data and expertise to identify common factors contributing to student loss and find effective practices that measurably improve student momentum and progression in U.S. higher education." It's already huge, with 16 institutions having contributed 1,600,000 anonymized and institutionally de-identified student records and more than 12,000,000 course level records to the PAR Framework dataset. Tis is all part of the Data Cookbook, " a central, highly visible location to store all of the details of your institution’s reporting terminology and report specifications."

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