Will Thalheimer, Subscription Learning: A Fundamentally Different Form of eLearning #LSCon
Cammy Bean, Cammy Bean's Learning Visions, March 19, 2014

I'm not sure I would call it 'subscription learning' but Will Thalheimer has definitely picked up on a trend when he identifies ongoing, mostly informal, non-event-based learning. Cammy Bean summarizes: " Repetitions support learning, spaced repetitions are generally more effective... You can use lots of different tools and tech to provide spaced learning: email, text, e-learning. Use delayed emails (this is easy to set up in Outlook)." I've always thought of what I am doing here with this newsletter as a form of e-learning, and I think it serves as a good example of the sort of learning Thalheimer is talking about (but without tests and quizzes).

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Emerging Best Practices for Using Storify For Archiving Event Tweets
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, March 19, 2014

Part of the hook of this post is that it takes us outside the 'archiving event tweets' dicussion to consider the nuances of being 'open', and in particular Sheila MacNeill’s post Why the Opposite of Open isn’t Necessarily Broken. One important point is that despite the popularity of MOOCs the battle for 'open' hasn't been won, and isn't nearly over (not even in the world of MOOCs!). A second is that while most people live and work in a closed world, it's not because they're anti-open, it's because the practice of being open simply isn't entrenched in most people's lives. Which brings us back to the topic of tweeting (and otherwise IMing, since many people do not tweet) at conferences. Even here, practices are still being established. I don't know about depending on Storify and Lanyard for conference backchannel archive support. But it's not clear other options really exist.

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People Who Use E-Readers Dive Far Deeper Into Books
Rachel Ediodin, Wired, March 19, 2014

One survey isn't of course worth the paper it isn't written on, but still this item raises some interesting questions. Like, for example: werenm't e-readers supposed to make it harder to read a book, and make people less likely to read deeply into them? But here we read " adult readers tend to read more and stick with books longer if they’re using an e-reader." What's more, "access to free digital books has led them to titles they otherwise wouldn’t have picked up."

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Another Day, Another EdTech Giant Acquired
Rip Empson, TechCrunch, March 19, 2014

There's some churn in the background in the education technology industry as last week Renaissance Learning was acquired by a private equity firm for about a billion, and this week Skillsoft was acquired by another priovate equity firm for $2 billion. Skillsoft "has also undergone a transformation over the years, morphing from a learning courseware provider in IT training for the corporate market into a technology solutions company."

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Study
Freeman Murray, Jaaga, March 19, 2014

It's not online learning - students work on their program 40 hours a week in residence in Bangalore - but it draws from free and open online learning resources "by studying classes from CodeAcademy, TeamTreeHouse, CodeSchool, Udacity, Programmr.com, CodeLearn.org, Stanford, Harvard and MIT & Installing open source software and going through the tutorials." The tuition of 1 Lakh (100,000 Rupees) is deferred until after graduation, and studetns pay residential costs by doing freelance work. What makes the program work, write the administrators, are the study groups students form among themselves to provide mutual support. "So far they get most of their support from each other. We provide guidance on what classes to take, tho ultimately they are making the decisions. We follow up with them to see how they are doing," writes Freeman Murray in an email.

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