By The Numbers: MOOCS in 2016
Dhawal Shah, Class Central, 2016/12/26

This year's MOOC numbers from Class Central. "In it’s fifth year, 23 million people worldwide registered for a MOOC for the first time ever... This makes the total number of students who signed up for at least one MOOC estimated to be 58 million."

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The broken edtech ecosystem investors once avoided is changing
Charles Wiles, TechCrunch, 2016/12/26

According to this article, " innovative apps have been unable to displace archaic, inferior technologies in schools because of restricted funding and a general unwillingness of schools to disrupt the status quo." This, however, is beginning to change. "Schools are ripe for this new generation of intelligent software that uses data, analytics and intelligent algorithms to make teaching more informed and effective and to help students learn better." I think the gushing tone of this article is a bit overstated, and so, therefore, is the forecast "to grow 17 percent year-on-year to become worth $252 billion by 2020," if only because educators are more resistant to commercialization than they are to technology.

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This Simple Tweak in Goal-Setting Changed My Creative Output
John Spencer, 2016/12/26

If you can get past the come-ons and popups that litter this page (despite my Firefox settings) you'll enjoy the discussion of outcome-based versus process-based goals. The former focuses on short-term results, while the latter allows for more exploration and depth. " Instead of saying, “I’m going to run 25 miles this week,” I’m said, “I’m setting aside 40 minutes five days a week to go running.” If I run slower, fine. If I run faster, okay. If something comes up and I can’t get it done, that’s fine."

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xAPI: Beyond the What
Myra Roldan, GP Strategies, 2016/12/26

Short article, maybe a 2-minute read, that will give you a good overview of xAPI. Something to pass along to an executive who needs to know but who doesn't have time.

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Pedagogical framing of OER—The case of language teaching
Linda Bradley, Sylvi Vigmo, Open Praxis, 2016/12/26

Ths paper looks at instructor uses and perceptions of open educational resources based on a survey of teachers and users of the lektion.se Swedish-language resource and support site. The authors determine that site users are working with a limied definition of open educational resources with "little awareness and no consensus of the definitions of the concepts of OER." So "the participatory culture is based on a restricted definition of OER, to state only sharing and reuse."

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