New e-Literate TV Series on MOOCs
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, April 25, 2014

Consultants Michael Feldstein and Phil Hill were at the MOOC Research Institute conference in Arlington last fall recording videos for their new series of videos. "If 2013 was the year that MOOC mania peaked in the Gartner hype cycle," writes Feldstein, "then surely 2014 is the year in which they have entered the trough of disillusionment." No, I'm not in the videos, but that's OK, I'm not really a part of this conversation they're having.

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BIM and BAD
David T. Jones, The Weblog of (a) David Jones, April 25, 2014

I like this acronym - it's not complete, but it's a great start: "BAD is an acronym that captures what I think is missing from the institutional approach to university e-learning

1. Bricolage – the LMS as Enteprise Systems doesn’t allow or cater for bricolage.
2. Affordances – resulting in an inability to leverage the affordances of technology to improve learning and teaching.
3. Distribution – the idea that knowledge about how to improve L&T is distributed and the implications that has for the institutional practice of e-learning."

This wasn't what we were trying to develop when we developed MOOCs, but if this had been the description of what we were trying, it wouldn't have been far off.

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Introducing Powerchord (Blackbird edition)
Dan Lockton, Architectures, April 25, 2014

The powerchord is a simple device that represents energy use in a household as background noises - birdsongs, rain falling, etc. In this post, the author describes associating the noises with specific appliances: "The ‘Sound of the Office’ represented twelve hours’ electricity use by three items of office infrastructure – the kettle, a laser printer, and a gang socket for a row of desks – turned into a 30-second MIDI file." I love this idea. "It’s an exploration of what’s possible, or might be useful, in helping people develop a different kind of understanding of energy use, and the patterns of energy use in daily life – not just based on on numerical feedback. If it’s design for behaviour change, it’s aiming to do so through increasing our understanding of, and familiarity with, the systems around us, making energy use something we can develop an instinctual feeling for."

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