ALT ocTEL

Even the fabled personalization that digital learning affords is really a form of mass customization. There is no personal relationship. It is a market of knowledge where no one is known and care is limited to the provision of choices. Whether its crusaders are venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, academics, or students, the colonizer is a transactional view of education, centered on knowledge as a commodity, which displaces a relational view of education, centered on developing through relationships. This in turn becomes, like all precious resources of colonial territories, no longer a common good but a leisurely privilege.

Perry Samson is presenting at ALT-C 2013. He is aiming to move classroom teaching on beyond use of clickers to more sophisticated (and also remote) forms of interaction

Interesting data shared by Cousera founders, with pointers to further MOOC research

Marvellously savvy discussion of what MOOCs could mean for higher education, which gets into the places that most discussions don't touch

A group of European leaders in TEL, led by Nicolas Balacheff, is putting together an open access Thesaurus and Dictionary of TEL, in multiple languages, as a service to the community. Nicolas is looking for further entries to be written on e.g.: Pervasive Learning, Augmented Reality Learning, Handheld Learning, Blended Learning and would be happy to have offers of further topics that are not in the list. A Thesaurus entry is short (one page) in a structured format, and you will be credited as editor of that entry.

A guide for designing and developing e-learning courses

This looks like a good introduction to designing an e-learning course from conception to delivery.

An article on the outcome of recent experiment in the use of Khan Academy content to teach maths to township children in South Africa.