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As MOOCs cast their eye to the developing world, very minor tweaks matter a great deal, such as the ability to allow students to download, rather than only stream course videos. But even more major ones are coming, including edX’s plans to start open-sourcing its platform in the next few months, which could allow even more universities to post online courses, and software programmers around the world to experiment with customized interfaces.

“We need to make sure we are making tools that make it easy to create new content, so it’s not only someone at MIT or Stanford who creates.” Relevance, as he notes, is one of the biggest motivators for students.

One of the major challenges for MOOCs—which so far mostly come from U.S. universities—is to tailor the content of courses to a diverse worldwide audience with any number of combinations of language, educational, motivational, and cultural backgrounds. Critics fear the rise of big box education from only a few elite institutions in Western nations, and worry these may not fit the different learning styles in different nations.

Prof. Reis ties this study into the world of online video. He discusses how, after just the first 10 seconds of a video (like the one above for example), 11% of all viewers have abandoned the video. After just one minute (regardless of how long the video is), more than HALF of all viewers are gone. And after 5 minutes, just 9% of the original viewers will remain.

Social media is win-win.

Everything you say can be used against you, especially if you offend someone.  Be on your best behavior and interact from a professional position, not a personal one.

Interact and maintain dialogue.  If someone messages you, reply – take part in open discussions. Take the time to show appreciate for all manner of feedback, whether it is positive or negative.

Companies are STILL dragging their asses trying to decide if it’s worth the investment.  The longer they weight, the farther behind they’re going to get.

Businesses are still wrestling with the concept of integrating with social media, and it’s completely understandable.  Despite the many reports that can be found online, along with case studies that speak to the success of social media being used for business there are still a number of questions being raise

The Pepsi Refresh Project

but social media is bigger than other media channels at this point and is so amazingly diverse there really isn’t one single “basket”. 

If you’re a Windows user looking for free online storage, three services stand out from the rest. Although Dropbox, SkyDrive, and Google Drive are superficially similar, there are some big differences. Here’s what to look for.

High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?

YouTube announced a new batch of partners that were added to its Education Channel today and noted that nearly 80% of the viewership of educational content on the site came from outside the United States. Less than 70% of the site's total traffic is International, so the educational content is disproportionately viewed by global audiences. Both YouTube and iTunes U are serving up huge quantities of educational content to a world already in the throes of a 50 year revolution in global education. In some ways they represent exactly the kind of education that a new world needs, too: learning that augments existing education and fosters life-long development of non-routine analytical and interactive skills. That's a recipe for good times. YouTube now hosts more than 500,000 educational videos, on a wide variety of topics. The new mobile-friendly iTunes U also offers 500,000 educational resources and says that 60% of its viewership comes from outside the United States. This global consuption of US-created online educational content may be the newest chapter in a radical transformation of global education over the past 50 years. Life in this world is not like it used to be just a few decades ago, and the availability of world-class education on-demand, at almost no cost, is likely to help things change all the more as this century unfolds.

A trend began, at least in the United states, as far back as 1985: demand for "routine manual skills" has held relatively steady, demand for non-routine manual skills has plummeted. Demand for routine cognitive skills climbed through 1970, then fell. What's hot? Non-routine analytic and non-routine interactive skills. Those are things that a good YouTube or iTunes U video about world history or global ecology can help improve, your non-routine analytic and interactive skills. More than for just economic well-being, those are skills that positively impact quality of life in many ways.

Google Fusion Tables in documents listWith this week’s update, we’re also integrating Google Fusion Tables into your documents list. Google Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to gather, visualize and collaborate on data online. Now you’ll be able to store and share your Fusion Tables with the rest of the files in your documents list.Recently, people have used Google Fusion Tables to:Visualize evacuation zones for New York City during Hurricane IreneHost data sets made public by the State of CaliforniaGather data from local flu shot clinics for Google Flu Vaccine FinderMap shelters and road status during the tsunami crisis in JapanGo to Create new > Table from your documents list menu to get started visualizing or sharing tables of data in .csv, .xls or .kml files.