Solicitation View for ADLBAA12001-0000
ASFI Acquisition Business Web Site, August 23, 2013

Interesting U.S. military request for research proposals to develop a 'personal assistant for learning' (PAL). "The PAL environment must allow the learner seamless access to a network of capable peers and/or mentors, and function across multiple platforms and environments (e.g., reality, mixed reality, virtual worlds, serious games, and simulations). It must assess and track performance throughout the learning process, whether formal or informal. Inherent system requirements include scalability and flexibility of platform and learning environment."

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Ed20Work Web20Tools
Joel Josephson, YouTube, August 23, 2013

Joel Josephson posts, via email, "A collection of 18 useful videos produced for the Ed2.0Work EU project that introduce Skype, WizIQ, Voicethread, Voxopop, Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous, AudioBoo, Slideshare, Prezi, Google Drive, Wikispaces, PBWorks, Diigo, Delicious, Reddit and the EU project Web20ERC."

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Lawrence Lessig Strikes Back Against Bogus Copyright Takedown
Corynne McSherry, Daniel Nazer, Electronic Frontier Foundation, August 23, 2013

My introduction to publishing was this: I submitted something I thought was pretty good, and the publisher throught so too, and was set to publish it. But first, I would have to write the authors (or publishers) or every quote, no matter how short, that I used in my piece, and get written permission to use it. Though still a bit of a neophyte, I had heard of fair use, and knew this was absurd. That was pretty much the end of my association with publishers, and I am pretty much allow publication of my work "as is" - if you don't like it, don't ask for it and don't publish it. In the more litigious south, Lawrence Lessig is taking a different route to a similar problem, launching a lawsuit against Google for the takedown notices issued against uses of copyright content which are very obviously fair use. I wish him luck, though I suspect the court will say a private agency like YouTube can set up whatever rules it wants, however restrictive, just like commercial publishers have always done.

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Dear Huffington Post, you get the commenters you deserve and real names won’t change that
Patrick Thornton, The Journalism Iconoclast, August 23, 2013

Huffington Post has decided to end the practice of anonymous comments. It won't make a difference, argues this post, unless they show they actually care what comments they receive. As we've seen with Facebook and other sites, signed non-anonymous comments can be just as vile as the anonymous kind. The only way for a site to ensure it has good comments is to have someone read every one and delete the detrius.

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A New Polemic: Libraries, MOOCs, and the Pedagogical Landscape
August 23, 2013

Interetsing article that looks at the relation between MOOCs and libraries and publishing. This is a useful approach: "'a MOOC isn’t a thing at all, just a methodological approach [and arguably, an emerging business model], with no inherent value except insofar as it’s being used' (Stommel, 2012). And MOOCs are being used as critical instruments by scholars, librarians, op-ed columnists, publishers, programmers, bloggers, teachers, and students."

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Why Obama’s Radical Education Plan Could Finally Disrupt College
August 23, 2013

As is so often the case, Audrey Watters has the best take on Obama's new education plan for the United States. She cites the TechCrunch listing and then says, "Once you stop laughing your ass off at this breathlessly ludicrous headline (remember when the same author said that the Udacity/San Jose State deal would “end higher education as we know it”?), feel free to take a closer look at the actual details of the President's plan for higher education."

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