Three Trends Worth Watching for Continuing Education Leaders
Cathy Sandeen, Higher Education Today, May 29, 2014

All three of these trends are very likely, I think. Here's the list:

• Tiered service models at universities
• Analytics and data-driven management
• Alternative credentials

To a certain degree, all of these are already present in institutions or in learning technology; what we will probably see over the next few years is widespread adoption.

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DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users
Mitchell, Mozilla Blog, May 29, 2014

One of the reason content companies have been creating their own browsers is to be able to implement in-browser digital rights management (DRM) instead of relying on plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. Open source browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, have no such incentive. However, as the web moves toward built-in DRM, even the open source browsers find themselves having to fall in line. So we move one step closer to the closed web, where you surrender your identity, surrender your choices, and (most likely) pay for the privilege.

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Designing Learning Tools — Introduction to Some Methodological Thoughts
Teemu Leinonen, FLOSSE Posse, May 29, 2014

Alex Hayes asked for my comments on this post following my digital research methodologies talk. Here's what I said about it back in 2010. My response today: I think that what's important here is to understand that the design theories are nothing more than abstractions of the actual process, that they are most useful as descriptions of what was done, as opposed to prescriptions of what should be done, that the design methodologies represent a palatte of possible approaches, and that (as the second principle states) "designers should aim and accept that design is often based on informed guessing."

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Untrusted
Alex Nisnevich, Games with Purpose, May 29, 2014

This is an interesting concept in learning games. The player is presented with a maze. So the idea is to escape. But to do so, you have to go into the Javascript that defines the maze and edit the code. "With a strong emphasis on reading unfamiliar code and modifying it through the creative use of a limited set of commands, the game helps budding coders to develop the core problem solving skills." I'm currently pondering level 4. Here's a direct link to the game, Untrusted. Via theoret.ca.

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