August 3, 2011
Now Available for Free Download: The Edupunks’ Guide!
Anya Kamenetz,
DIYU, August 1, 2011.
Anya Kamenetz announces, "I’m very excited to announce that The Edupunks’ Guide is now available for free download as a nicely designed PDF and in plain-text e-reader-compatible versions. A better-looking Kindle version coming soon at Amazon.com. TheEdupunksGuide.org will launch later this fall as a site with some features that will hopefully allow people to comment on, annotate and expand the guide. For now, this blog remains the place for Edupunks’ Guide updates." Cool! Though I wonder about the copyright Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - sure would be nice if they funded some real edupunks (ahem, cough).
Farewell Flash? Adobe Launches HTML5 Web Animations Tool "Adobe Edge"
Sarah Perez,
ReadWriteWeb, August 1, 2011.
This would be very nice if it signals a change of direction from Adobe - and is wide, because it allows them to preserve most of their market share while becoming web-compatible. Because the money Adobe makes isn't from its plug-ins -- these are given out free and actually a distraction. It's from their authoring tools. "Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike." Also, Brent Schlenker notes that "An even BIGGER deal for me is that it's available for the Mac, and is currently a FREE download."
This Is Why Your Newspaper Is Dying
Scott Beale,
Laughing Squid, July 31, 2011.
Dolors Reig shares this on Google+, and I've seen it making the rounds. That's probably because it's accurate - newspapers have yet to understand the web form - and because it is transferable to other domains, such as education. Missing links, page clutter, bat formatting, crammed content - all of these typify educational offerings inside an LMS as well as newspaper sites (I recall one case looking at an LMS where the content was in a tiny 3x2 box surrounded by cruft and clutter).
Massive open online course
Various Authors,
Wikipedia, July 30, 2011.
This is the Wikipedia page for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It is in need of more editing, but the authors are off to a good start. It would be relevant to add any MOOC you may know about, as well as any academic papers or magazine or journal articles you've seen. There's a Google Groups thread dedicated to the page.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Google, Wikipedia, Academia]
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