EU's right to be forgotten: Guardian articles have been hidden by Google
James Ball, The Guardian, Jul 03, 2014

I'm sympathetic with both sides here. As "the result of a European court ruling that individuals had the right to remove material about themselves from search engine results," the Guardian newspaper reports that various stories about people it covers have been removed from search engine results. One such is the removal of results related to "Dougie McDonald, who was found to have lied about his reasons for granting a penalty in a Celtic v Dundee United match." Now on the one hand we should expect to have some privacy from Google's prying eyes. On the other hand, a newspaper - or, for that matter, a blogger - ought to have the right to post news about the person. Either way, it's up to a court - not Google - to make the decision, not as a blanket decision, but on a case by case basis.

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Demoting Social Silos to Syndication Endpoints
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, Jul 03, 2014

David Wiley discovers Known and the result is magical. "Known is a publication platform that uses the “POSSE” publication model, where POSSE stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. .. The POSSE model is just beautiful. It represents everything empowering about the Reclaim and Retain work. In fact, the more I wrapped my head around it, the more excited I got." See more about Known. This is the model - promoted here through everything from indiweb to Diaspora to syndication itself - that we've been taking about here for years. It's the basis for the personal learning environment. It's the basis for mesh networking. Welcome to the future, David. Maybe you want to read this (and this) and we can talk about breaking down the silos and building indie learning. Via Jim Groom.

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Jobs Charted by State and Salary
Nathan Yau, Flowing Data, Jul 03, 2014

Interesting presentation, sadly using U.S. data only, of every major job category, the size of the population employed in it, and the average salary. What I find noteworthy is that the slider only needs to move between $20K to $180K. It raises the question: who needs more than $180K to live? And why would incomes be higher than that? The vast majority of us earn something within that range. The people who earn more are deriving an unfair advantage from the work the rest of us produce and are distorting marketplace pricing for goods and services (everything from food to health care) the rest of us need to live.

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The Future is Open
Various authors, Creative Commons, Jul 03, 2014

Creative Commons has released their annual report as a picture book. I'm not sure what to think of that. Sure, there's text, but the presentation is mostly visual. The main highlight is the release of version 4.0 of the licenses - we are told they are "global licenses" that don't need to be adapted to each jurisdiction. "The new licenses include provisions related to database rights, personality rights, data mining, and other issues beyond the scope of the original CC licenses." But better is the recognition that "CC licenses are a patch, not a fix, for the problems of the copyright system." This is reflected in a policy statement that urges that content be considered "open by default". Controls on reuse should be the exception, not the rule, and in my view, should require special justification. So much of any creation is borrowed from others there needs to be substantial justification for locking it in its entirety. I guess I don't mind the picture-book format, but posting credits on every page for each image, even the navigation icons, is distracting. Just build a credits page.

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How Should I Offer This Course? The Course Delivery Decision Model (CDDM)
Thomas M. Brinthaupt, Maria A. Clayton, Barbara J. Draude, Paula T. Calahan, MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT), Jul 03, 2014

This is not a bad paper though I wish the authors had been more imaginative in their typology of delivery models - the old "in-class, hybrid or online" classification could admit of much more nuance, ranging from pedagogical style (active learning, constructionism, lecture) through to media employed (videos, texts, simulations). There's a bit of that in the only substantive diagram of the model, which begins with sets of options for content, activities and feedback. But these seem placed squarely within an instructivist frame, and do not help guide delivery decisions in any substantive manner. I think the discussion is interesting, even though the model suffers from the flaws of models generally: people who understand the model don't need it, while people who need the model don't understand it.

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Conditional Release of Course Materials: Assessing Best Practice Recommendations
Lawanna S. Fisher, Justin G. Gardner, Thomas M. Brinthaupt, Deana M. Raffo, MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT), Jul 03, 2014

This is a pretty interesting paper up to the end of page four. It discusses the phenomenon of 'conditional release of material' - that is, showing students course content only after they have reached a certain threshold, such as passing a quiz. The author surveys types of and conditions for conditional release. You can stop reading at the point where you read the statement "Two of the authors surveyed undergraduate students in their courses over two semesters." The data that follows is essentially useless, even discounting the response rate of 38% from the surveys (I don't know why authors feel compelled to write these papers and why journals like JOLT feel compelled to publish them).

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