Moby Dick Big Read
Various Authors, Website, September 21, 2012.

I love this idea: various actors, famous and not so famous, are reading a chapter a day from Moby Dck and posting them online. Here's chapter one. It only started five days ago, so it's easy to catch up, if you have an hour or two. It will take more than a half-year to read all 165 chapters. I've signed up to the RSS feed. "‘I have written a blasphemous book’, said Melville when his novel was first published in 1851, ‘and I feel as spotless as the lamb’. Deeply subversive, in almost every way imaginable, Moby-Dick is a virtual, alternative bible – and as such, ripe for reinterpretation in this new world of new media." p.s. This can be turned into a MOOC pretty easily - here's a hashtag (#mobydick). People can chat, discuss, blog and generally agitate around the daily audio post, and by the end of it, each person will have had a unique Moby Dick experience. Via Open Culture.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, New Media, RSS]

Ed Startup 101, Week 4
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, September 21, 2012.

I encounter this a lot in my day job. "It’s Week 4 of Ed Startup 101, and the class is moving on to tackle “The Pain Test.” That is, you might’ve identified your idea for an education startup, but does this idea really address a problem?" The idea of course is that your innovation - your startup - needs to address an area of genuine need. I get that, but the pain test isn't it. Before the iPod, people didn't feel the pain of not having an iPod. Before MOOCs, there was no burning need for a MOOC. The best innovations create demands for things people didn't realize they needed. But these invariably fail the pain test.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Apple Inc.]

A new academic year: global, connected, creative – and not (quite) a MOOC
Helen Keegan, Heloukee: EdTech and Digital Culture, September 21, 2012.

This looks like a pretty good initiative - says it's not a MOOC, but I'm straining my mind trying to figure out why it's not a MOOC. "It’s certainly pretty open, multi-disciplinary, multi-level and networked, and builds on existing communities of practice and the mentoring that has emerged over the past 6 years (staff and ex-students -> current students). Most importantly, it’s creative, occasionally anarchic and relatively ad hoc." Sounds like a MOOC to me!

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Mentors and Mentoring, Networks, Academia]

Chockadoc - A Catalog of Online Documentaries
Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, September 21, 2012.

I'm always looking for new resources for audio and video on the web. "Chockadoc is a place to find full-length documentaries that you can watch online for free. Chockadoc, like sites similar to it, pulls most of its content from YouTube. The benefit of using Chockadoc over YouTube is the categorization of the videos. The categorization makes it easier than searching YouTube to find documentaries about a particular topic or theme."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: YouTube, Video, Push versus Pull, Ontologies, Audio]

Ed Radio September 21, 2012
, , September 21, 2012.

Ed Radio September 21, 2012

• The Learning Genome Project video - Kelly Tenkely
• The University in the Digital Age - Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies 2011, "The Digital and the Human(ities)", The keynote lecture by Alan Liu
• Sistar, How Dare You? (Music Video)
• John Seely Brown Lecture on Learning in the Digital Age - gues talk at IU, 2009
• EdReach - Welcome Back, Mobile Learning
• Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education
• Higher Ed Live, The Campus Visit, with Ashley Hennigan

[Comment][Tags: Personalization, Video]

Nick Clegg Says Sorry (The Autotune Remix)
Various Authors, YouTube, September 21, 2012.

YouTube: "In a party political broadcast, LibDem leader Nick Clegg apologises for breaking a manifesto promise on tuition fees, admitting that it was a mistake." The autotuned version is much better. Students, meanwhile, are paying the higher fees, no matter how eloquent the apology, despite the nation having voted against them.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: YouTube, Video, Tuition and Student Fees]

Losing Our (Analytics) Religion
Ellen Wagner, eLearning Roadtrip, September 20, 2012.

Some realism from Ellen Wagner. " The answers to learning questions - enterprise, individual or otherwise - are not likely to emerge fully formed from the mists of Apache Hadoop, Google Analytics or Adobe Omniture. All of which are very cool technologies. But seriously, they can't make up your mind for you."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Google, Cool]