Conversation on Workplace Learning and Literacy
Stephen Downes, Valerie Irvine, John Kenney, YouTube, 2014/10/24

Framed around the LPSS program, and looking at specific issues such as workplace learning and literacy, this discussion outlines some of my views on the problems we are trying to solve, the applicability of the solutions we are creating, and the question of broader social needs being served by the program. I am in one window; Valerie Irvine and John Kenney are in the other.

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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, IMS Global Learning Consortium, and International Digital Publishing Forum Announce Digital Learning Metadata Alliance
Press Release, IMS, 2014/10/24

According to this press release issued by IMS, the new organization will be called the Digital Learning Metadata Alliance and can be found at dlma.org - "The first incarnation of DLMA work will be the metadata schema for EDUPUB a joint collaboration between IDPF and IMS Global to enable e-books that are interoperable across reader platforms, web browsers and educational systems (such as learning platforms and learning tools)." Dublin Core just the other day assumed formal responsibility over the learning resource metadata initiative (LRMI). The significant feature of this annpouncement is the inclusion of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), which is "the global trade and standards organization for the digital publishing industry."

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Poverty Is Strongest Factor in Whether High School Graduates Enroll in College
Laurie Arnston, Higher Education Today, 2014/10/24

Despite all the emphasis on how important teaching and testing are for improving educational outcomes, the fact remains that the worst results from higher-income schools are still better than the best results from low-income schools. This is why education alone is not sufficient to provide opportunities to youth. Governments also have to be focused on measures that address equity, in order to lower the pervasive impact of poverty on outcomes. Measures that do not address this cause are not (despite the rhetoric) addressing outcomes; they are addressing some other objective, an objective the proponents do not want to talk about.

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Solidarity in the Ivory Tower
Herbert Pimlott, Academic Matters, 2014/10/24

Herbert Pimlott writes, "The growing number of precarious academic workers teaching an ever-larger number of undergraduate students is a threat. It is a threat to our profession, with serious implications for our working conditions, our compensation, and the future of collegial governance. It is also a threat to the existence of higher education and the public university as we know it. Indeed, it is also part of the tale of Canada’s shrinking middle class."

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LISTedTECH: New wiki site and great visualizations
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2014/10/24

Phil Hill onmtroduces us to this interesting site that assembles statistics on technology usage in education, creating useful visualizations in the process. LISTedTECH wiki used to run on Drupal, but has since converted to a MediaWiki. This makes it a lot easier for people to add content (though sadly the RSS feeds are not useful). " LISTedTECH was created by Justin Menard, who is Business Intelligence Senior Analyst at University of Ottawa," writes Hill. "The site is broader in scope than just the LMS – there is a rich source of data & visualizations on MOOCs, university rankings, and IPEDS data. Most of the visualizations are presented by Tableau and therefore interactive in nature, allowing the user to filter data, zoom in on geographic data, etc."

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Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”
Isaac Asimov, MIT Technology review, 2014/10/24

Isaac Asimov was very influential on me ion my youth, and I read many of the dozens and dozens of books he authored. This essay is a previously unpublished article he wrote on creativity, and it is not surprising to see the affinity between my own thought and what he wrote. "What is needed," he writes, "is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected." And, "Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a 'new idea,' but as a mere 'corollary of an old idea.'"

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