Vocabulary Definitions
Various authors, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), December 16, 2013

I found this interesting. It's the action vocabulary being considered for the W3C's RightsML. What that means is that it's a list of actions that can be governed by a digital rigthjs license, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (they're importing and adapting the ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language) specifications. Reading the list (it takes seconds) is a fascinating experience, as it shows that the sorts of things governed by licenses include tracking, sharing, annotating, anonymizing, and much much more. It illustrates how pervasive digital rights has the potential to become in our everyday lives. So I view this list with a mixture of fascination and fear.

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Replace your Firefox and Chrome Plugins with Bookmarklets for Cross-Platform Productivity
Ted Curran, Ted Curran.net, December 16, 2013

Although browser extensions add a lot of functionality, they can slow down both startup and page loading. As a result, I tend to run very few extensions - an ad blocker, Flash and Silverlight, and that's about it (Java is installed but usually turned off). So I don't have access to a lot of the functionality extensions offer. Enter bookmarklets. They're a lot like extensions, but you only load them when you need them, by clicking on a bookmark. They are just bits of Javascript code that runs in place on the page you're viewing, and can be used to clean formatting and many other things. This page is an outline of bookmarklets with links to useful lists.

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Look back in anger? A review of online learning in 2013
Tony Bates, online learning, distance education resources, December 15, 2013

Tony Bates channels his inner Osborne as he reflects on the non-advance of MOOCs in 2013. He writes, "I was struck by a recent comment from someone with 15 years of experience in designing face-to-face, blended and online credit programs: I am trying to understand what MOOCs can offer that my understanding of educational design, learning design and online and distance education does not include. I’m afraid that the answer continues to be: ‘Nothing,‘ at least for the moment."

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Massive, Open, and Course Design
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, December 15, 2013

I don't know why this has been such a mystery up to now, because we've been harping on it for, what, ten years? Feldstein writes, "While Martin is focusing primarily on course goals and how those should determine metrics, he’s beginning to raise the question of how individual learner goals should influence course design. And once you start asking that question, it changes everything." Yes it does. That's why we designed MOOCs the way we did. How often have we said this, all the way back to 2008: "you will get students in the class with substantially different goals, including many that do not care about certification at all." I remember reacting against David Merrill's conception of 'learner-centered' at NLII in 2002- "It is learner centered not merely in the sense that it is, as David Merrill would say, 'open-ended', it is learner centered in the sense that the learning is created by the learner. Will it work? It is already working."

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We Can Now Automate Hiring. Is that Good?
Peter Cappelli, Harvard Business Review Blogs, December 15, 2013

One motivations for e-portfolios is to build credentials to assist employment prospects. It helps automate the job search. It's worth watching software that apporoaches this from the other end, too. "Checking references.  That can be done now online by companies like SkillSurvey.com,...Bringing candidates in for interviews can also be eliminated with tools like Hirevue.com, who conduct standardized, video interviews that are scored and that employers can then review on their own time.  HireIQ.com moves the interview process to automated telephone interviews that are taped and assessed for personality and other attributes... Vendors like salary.com or payscale.com can tell you what market wages are for jobs like yours in your community..." The question, though, isn't "Is this good?" The question is, "How can we make this better?"

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Educational Publisher’s Charity, Accused of Seeking Profits, Will Pay Millions
Javier C. Hernandez, New York Times, December 15, 2013

The Pearson Foundation is in trouble after it "repeatedly broke New York State law by assisting in for-profit ventures." The for-profit venture is, of course, Pearson publishing. In an email to a mailing list, Creative Commons head Cable Green said "the next time Pearson takes a swing at OER as being low quality, poor quality - as costing tax payers more money, as being a waste of time... it may be useful to remind them, in a public forum, that they are not playing by the tax laws of the United States and their actions appear to value profit over access to educational resources." See also this item. The publisher must pay $7.7 after being accused with working with the Gates Foundation to sponsor some Common Core courses to be used by U.S. schools. The courses were later sold to Pearson Piublishing for $15.1 million.

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