Canada Turns 150
Ibraheem Youssef, Dave Watson, Canada Turns 150, December 17, 2013

After an article showing proposed logos for Canada's 150th birthday dismayed graphic artists from coast to coast to coast, Ibraheem Youssef and Dave Watson launched a website with contributions from patriotic professionals across the country. These designs are all better than the (semi-)official designs being tested. I quite like especially Greg Mühlböck's logo (pictured), as well as David Bromley's and Lee Wilson's. Also: Lionel Gadoury, President of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers posted an article about the Project, read it here. The project leaders in turn responded with an open letter, which you can read here. (This whole discussion, of course, has everything to do with online learning.)

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The Future of eLearning in the Maritime Industry - a Lesson From History
Murray Goldberg, Maritiome Professional, December 17, 2013

This post is from the 'what have they done lately?' department. Murray Goldberg is known widely as the developer of WebCT, a learning management system that competed with, and was eventually acquired by, Blackboard. Later, he was the developer of Silicon Chalk (acquired by Horizon Wimba) and Brainify. Today he is known as the founder and President of Marine Learning Systems (www.marinels.com), the creator of MarineLMS - the learning management system designed specifically for maritime industry training. This post is by him, outlining the role of the LMS in Marine Learning. (Photo of Murray Goldberg: Marine Link).

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MOOCs For Teacher Training–Not a Fan
Alfred Thompson, Computer Science Teacher, December 17, 2013

First of all, I think this is just a use of the term 'MOOC' to mean 'online learning'. But more importantly, I am left wondering how long it's going to take to get with the program. Mark Guzdial writes, "Google's program to fund high school teacher professional development in CS will no longer fund face-to-face workshops. All on-line ONLY. Wish we could have figured out how to do online CS teacher workshops effectively first." Leaving aside the fact that it's Google, why would it take so long how to do this online? Especially for Google-funded computer science teachers! Alfred Thompson writes, "This seems like a big step backwards." It seems to me to be a step forward. Google probably figures that unless they cut off the funding for in-person training, teachers will never learn how to do it online. I know that's what I'd be trhinking after the years and years the Google teacher training program has been in place. (Photo: Greg Lindstrom, Daily Camera)

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Commercialising Public Research: New Trends and Strategies
Unattributed, OECD, December 17, 2013

This report from OECD looks at the phenomenon of commercializing public research. While some argue that commercialization represents a drift away from educational insitutions' core values, and others argue that public investments ought to be returned directly to the public, there is no denying that the trend toward commercialization of public research has taken hold, for better or worse. Drivers need the push for national competetiveness, the demand for public research accountability, the cost of scientific research, and even the trend toward open access to reserach data and innovation. So what does it look like? That's what this report answers. Reading through it, I would say it's a pretty accurate description of what's happening, at least when viewed from this researcher's perspective.

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edX Drops Plans to Connect MOOC Students With Employers
Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, December 17, 2013

According to a slide show leaked to the Chronicle of Higher Education, edX is abandoning its plan to link students with employers. "In a pilot job-placement program, edX recruited 868 high-performing students from two computer-science MOOCs at the University of California at Berkeley... only three landed job interviews. None was hired. The results of the pilot, which ran about a year ago, were not publicized." It turns out that this, too, is much more complex than the xMOOCers expected. "We would have to become a job company," said exD president Anant Agarwal. "You can’t just take the top people from the class and connect them with employers. There’s a lot more to it." Who would have thought? So what now? What else but this: "The organization has also started licensing some courses to institutions outside the edX consortium, including several California State University campuses. The institutions pay edX a per-student fee to adopt a MOOC for curricular use." Oh yeah? My cynicism abounds. (Graphic: Daniel N. Yue, Harvard Crimson)

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What is Differentiated Instruction
Karen Rojem, Special Education Association of BC, December 17, 2013

Responding to my post from yesterday, Michael Caulfield tweets "As @downes notes, differentiated engagement is not 'new', but this post of @mfeldstein67's is still an important one." It may be, but I want to be clear here that I am not talking about differentiated engagement when I talk about personal learning. Differentiated engagement consists of "effective teaching practices that are responsive to the ongoing learning preferences, interests and readiness of the individual learner." It's not about students making choices for themselves, it's about studying students and tailoring instruction specifically to them. What I propose is personal learning - defined by the student. Differentiated instruction is a form of personalized learning - defined by the instructor.

More: "Differentiated instruction implies a purposeful process for adapting the teaching and learning processes of the classroom to accommodate the needs of all learners" (Murray & Jorgenson, The Differentiated Math Classroom, 2007). Also often cited is is Tomlinson & McTighe (2006), Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design (full text in SlideShare). Tomlinson says, "Its  an approach to teaching that advocates active planning for student differences in classrooms." I especially enjoyed Cheryl Muscha's study of engagement through differentiation - "students hate change," she writes, observing how her second trial resulted in much better results than the pilot. Jennifer Gauthier (et.al.) provides good examples of differentiated lesson plans.

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