In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to Understanding the MOOC Novice
Keith Brennan, Hybri Pedagogy, July 25, 2013

Keith Brennan writes a well-thought-out and evenly expressed criticism of connectivism as it is applied in connectivist MOOCs. It's worth taking the time to read it in full: here it is. In response, I offer a long blog post called Connectivism and the Primal Scream, in which I set the record straight.

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TinCan in the Wild
Christian Glahn, Slideshare, July 25, 2013

Good slide presentation from a talk today on how the Experience API (aka 'Tin Can', aka xAPI) functions 'in the wild'. The core concept here isn't the xAPI data format so much as the Learning Record Store, which basically acts as the clearing house for 'sensor activations' (which may be external data, actions taken by the learner, requests, or anything else) and state changes in the LMS that result.

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Humans Are the World's Best Pattern-Recognition Machines, But for How Long?
Dominic Basulto, Big Think, July 25, 2013

This post draws on two aspects of Ray Kurzweil's thought - first, the idea that human intelligence (and intelligence in general) is based on pattern recognition, and second, that computers of the future will be able to do this as well - "the future of intelligence is in making our patterns better, our heuristics stronger." I don't disagree, but I think the article is overstated ("The same goes for just about any field of expert endeavor - it's really just a matter of recognizing the right patterns faster than anyone else..."). Also, I don't think the insight is Kurzweil's, particularly. Anyone working in connectionism is doing pattern-matching, and before that, researchers looking at logics of (relevant) similarities were doing the same.

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Meet Helpouts, Google’s Secret Project That Turns Hangouts Into A Commerce Platform
Rip Empson, TechCrunch, July 25, 2013

I've been using Hangouts a lot for educational purposes, including, most recently, yesterday. This is something that can obviously be monetized, given the right circumstances. And according to this article, the right circumstances are found in 'Helpouts'. The product "will take shape as a marketplace that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video." To judge from the screen shots, what these Helpouts look like - a lot - is online learning. Helpouts "will cover a range of categories, including computers, education, food, health, hobbies and repair. One can then imagine services on Helpouts ranging from health consultations and fitness classes to appliance repair support and cooking lessons."

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Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
Diogo Mónica, July 25, 2013

I learned my lesson in the 1980s when I lined up to get Genesis tix, was first in line, and found the best I could get was the 12th row. Yes, I took the seats, but the sense of disentitlement never left me. It was the same a couple years ago when I signed up for the U2 presale for their show in Moncton, logged on in the first few seconds, and was unable to obtain any Red Zone ticket. It's not the bots described in this article - they're just trhe latest weapon - it's the inequity of access to any major event. Money talks, and the rules for access go out the window. That's also what makes the 'elite' universities elite - it's not that they're better, rather, it's that they're the sort of place you need to have enough money not simply to pay tuition, but to be able to buy your place in line ahead of the places (if any) being made available for the plebes.

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MOOC Evaluation & Disruptive Technologies
Robert Farrow, OER Research Hub, July 25, 2013

Interesting summary of two recent items: first, an evaluation report of the OLDS MOOC curriculum design course by Simon Cross, and second, a suggestion from Gilly Salmon that MOOCs should be evaluated by their capacity for disruption. Reading the evaluation report, it feels like something other than participation numbers should be used (the usual satisfsaction surveys don't help a lot either). Even allowing for uncertainty in measurements, the participation rate drops steeply (though it occurs to me that the best way to dramatically reduce the dropoff would be to eliminate the initial registration altogether). Salmon, meanwhile, suggests MOOCs should be evaluated "by their capacity and capability to create positive and successful change for universities of the future" - a measure that Robert Farrow says "an be achieved in a number of ways (not all of which are desirable)."

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