Textbook Publishers Push to Provide Full Digital-Learning Experience
Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014

Pretty good overview of the state of the publishing market with respect to digital textbooks. The not so secret undercurrent: they'd like to move the LMS right out of the picture and "own the whole screen" if they could. "For the most part, it appears that publishers and learning-management companies have fought to a draw.... both sides have, for now, resigned themselves to sharing the student experience with their college clients, and each other."

[Link] [Comment]

Nuevo servicio de Google Meet Oppia bloqueado para Cuba
Raidell Avello Martínez, Tú puedes usar las TIC, March 3, 2014

So it looks like Oppia, which I mentioned last week, doesn't exactly allow anyone to create a new interactive learning experience. In particular, it doesn't allow people in Cuba to do this (nor probably in a few other countries, notably Iran, Syria and Sudan). Raidell Martinez writes, "Nuevamente he sido privado de acceder a un servicio de Google a causa del injusto bloqueo de EUA a nuestra hermosa isla de Cuba." (Again I have been deprived of access to a Google service because of the unjust U.S. blockade to our beautiful island of Cuba). Surely we can do better than this, can't we? Google, how about it?

[Link] [Comment]

U.S. Education Department Issues Guidance on Student Data Privacy
Benjamin Herold, Education Week, March 3, 2014

As summarized by Benjamin Herold, "the U.S. Department of Education released new guidance Tuesday on the proper use, storage, and security of the massive amounts of data being generated by new, online educational resources." The guidelines are relatively complete, referring to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as a baseline, identifying what information may be disclosed, and looking at exceptions (such as click-wrap licenses). Though it is U.S.-specific, the document provides a good guideline for other jurisdictions.

[Link] [Comment]

Meet Oppia, Google’s New Open Source Project That Allows Anyone To Create An Interactive Learning Experience
Rip Emerson, TechCrunch, March 2, 2014

The whole story is in the title (which is a nice contrast from those Ipworthy headlines). More, you have to like Google's approach here: "No trial periods, no freemium plans, no advertisements. Writing, editing, or learning from explorations on oppia.org is 100% free of charge! Additionally, all lessons on oppia.org are licensed CC-BY-SA, which means that you are allowed to copy, modify, and reuse lesson content. Want to host an Oppia instance yourself, or make modifications to it? The code behind oppia.org is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. You are encouraged to download, modify, and reuse Oppia's software to your heart's content!" OK, the lessons created by Oppia are really basic (I tried a bunch of them). But it's an interesting start.

[Link] [Comment]