From Open To Connected
Gardner Campbell, Gardner Writes, Aug 10, 2014

One of the points I've tried to make over the years is that open learning requires commented learning, and vice versa. That's why the drive to trivialize the 'open' in MOOC isn't just an accessibility problem, it's a pedagogical problem. Campbell writes, "we may well have missed the greater and more important aims that “open” strives toward. And while there’s no way to protect words from being twisted or co-opted, the phenomena of “openwashing” and the long long O in MOOC are troubling indicators that what initially seemed to be the language of openness may have fought shy of the question of what the openness was for. How otherwise to explain a world in which broadcast lectures are touted as innovations or disruptions?"

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Models for teaching by doing (labs, apprenticeship, etc.)
Tony Bates, online learning and distance edcuation resources, Aug 10, 2014

Tony Bates continues with his online book and the topic of this bit is as the title suggests: "There are a number of different models that focus on helping learners to learn by doing things, such as co-op or workplace programs, field trips or internships,usually under the supervision of more experienced mentors or instructors. Here I will touch briefly on only two, the use of laboratory classes/workshops/studios, and apprenticeship programs."

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Amway Journalism
Corey Pein, The Baffler, Aug 10, 2014

I'm not even remotely a fan of Jeff Jarvis, but I think that this criticism of him is a bit unfair. Curey Pein writes, "In their long and seemingly hopeless search for answers, journalists have internalized the abusive rhetoric of the 'disruption' brigade. Jarvis tells beleaguered journalists that they themselves, the lowly content-serfs—not short-sighted newspaper proprietors, not the Wall Street backers of corporate media conglomerates, not the sociopathic unchecked tech monopolies, not hostile politicians and prosecutors—are to blame for their sudden loss of livelihood." On the one hand, it's quite true that the technological age has led to exploitation (but mind you, what age has not?). And like Pein, I "criticize Jarvis for his tiresome 'cyber hustler' persona or his shameless grave-dancing amid mass layoffs." On the other hand, old media was "a vicious and ugly beast" and needed to be replaced. And in that, at least, Jarvis (himself a prototypical product of that era) was right.

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All Things in Modulation
Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed, Aug 09, 2014

It's hard not to be a bit cynical about the University of Wisconsin's strategy to reduce MOOC dropouts by making courses more locally focused and a lot shorter. “We’ve got to pick the greatest hits, as it were, of your course and find some of the material that you think, 'Boy, if [students] only have one exposure to me or my course, here are four things I want them to know,' ” said Joshua Morrill, a senior evaluator at UW-Madison.

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