Bass and Eynon identify "four shifts in thnking and action" to address the problem that there are "no established practices [in teaching and learning] that enable us to turn the individual breakthrough into something more than idiosyncratic.'

Michael Edson, director of digital media strategy at the Smithsonian Institution,... said in a presentation[at that "the future of knowledge creation is about putting it out there and building it collaboratively."

Hammered by relentless technological change, many companies take a reactive stance: They focus solely on keeping up, protecting their existing markets, and improving their performance. But a few companies take a proactive stance by executing shaping strategies: They use technology changes to create new business ecosystems that benefit themselves and other participants. Take Google's AdSense: It has reinvented the advertising business by enabling advertisers, content providers, and potential customers to connect with one another quickly, easily, and cheaply. To succeed, a shaping strategy needs a critical mass of participants, say Hagel, Brown, and Davison. Shapers can attract them by: * Convincingly articulating opportunities available to participants * Defining standards and practices that make participation easy and affordable * Demonstrating they have the conviction and resources for success and won't compete against participants Well-executed shaping strategies mobilize masses of players to learn from and share risk with one another - creating a profitable future for all.

Where will higher education be the day after the current global economic crisis passes? If you think things will simply go back to the way they were once the economy recovers in a year or two, think again.

A cool technique for portfolio-on-the-web

Visifire is a set of open source data visualization components - powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF...Visifire can also be embedded in any webpage as a standalone Silverlight App. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails or just simple HTML. No radar charts, but for some things, this might be useful.

"A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B's just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading. "

Feb 3 First reading, referred to Higher Education. (View Original Bill) Feb 17 Public hearing in the House Committee on Higher Education at 10:00 AM. Feb 18 Executive session in the House Committee on Higher Education at 1:30 PM.

A cyberlaw professor argues that Wikipedia is doomed. The online encyclopedia will need to choose between being "high quality" and "open," but both choices are fraught with risk.

Introduction to the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education's "Spaces for Interaction" program. AACE runs conferences, and they are asking how technology can improve the posibilities for interaction at and around conferences.

A funny, personal, and surprisingly moving talk about Tom Waits, Allah, and poems that come like trains of air.

Calais is an initiative by Thomson Reuters to connect the world's content by providing automated metadata (let's just call it tagging) services. The Calais service takes your text and uses sophisticated natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to extract the people, organizations, companies, geographies and events hidden within it.

It's way too easy to go global now, whether with your feelings, your money or your nightmares. The road to hell is paved with immediacy:

The "2009 Horizon Report," the latest edition of the annual list of technology trends to watch in education, is compiled based on news reports, research studies, and interviews with experts.

Prof. Stanley Fish ponders the book " "The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities," by Frank Donoghue. Donoghue argues that utilitarianism is all but triumphant in the American university, and that the non-instrumental studies like the Humanities are doomed.

Teachers are using college-wide blogging tools or free blogging services for different disciplines as a way to address e-portfolios, audience, publishing practices, copyright and plagiarism, authentic writing and writing in a digital age with hypertext.

Ning network for the EDUCause T&L Challenges project. Everything but the wiki...

After four months of spirited discussion, the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community has voted on the, "Top Teaching and Learning Challenges, 2009." The final list for 2009, ranked by popularity, includes (click on individual Challenges to visit their wiki page): 1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation. 2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual). 3. Reaching and engaging today's learner. 4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT. 5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.

Cohere is an Open University UK project to build a server-based system which extends social bookmarking to collaborative argumentation using a concept-map interface in the browser.