This is a very interesting project, especially in light of our conversation about ways that physiological and psychological markers can inform learning systems (adaptive learning, responsive software, etc.)

Article focusing on emerging technology in the realm of facial recognition that may be able to bolster the non-cognitive abilities of adaptive learning environments, by recognizing a student's reaction to content by analyzing body language.

Duke's entrance into the MOOC space with a course on Bioelectricity. Participation peaked at 1000 students per week. 12,000 students enrolled from 100 countries. The educational range of students varied greatly. 313 students successfully completed the course.

An intriguing essay calling for an end to the demarcation between online (digital) and offline (face-to-face). This author argues that the two do not exist in a vacuum, but rather are enmeshed completely in our lives, such that online activity, used appropriately, should not detract from offline use, but rather give it meaning.

This is a webinar chat that I sat in on today (A few questions I posed are featured in the Q&A at the end.) With the new SimCity release, they have also partnered with a company called GlassLab that has designed a teacher resource hub and also modified game that enables teachers to easily use the game in classrooms. There will be specific inquiry based challenges that allow students to interact in the game environment to investigate community issues (ranging from water shortages, power outages, labor disputes, earthquakes, budget concerns, etc.) and work with citizens and government to solve the issues. There is also an exciting multiplayer format where neighboring cities are controlled by other students and they must work together to solve problems. Glass Lab is partnering with EA Games, Gates Foundation, and ETS to build the teacher hub where educators can design and share best practices, lesson plans, etc. In addition, they will be doing a long term study to measure educational outcomes. It appears as though they are using this game as a pilot opportunity to build the framework for larger commercial game integration into the classroom.

Disney's Connected Learning program has been developing games for 6 years now, the most popular title being Club Penguin. They are currently planning to roll out several pre-school titles and are also capturing data on the games effects on learning outcomes. Interesting to see Disney attracting top talent from the gaming industry to help develop games and also not shying away from doing the research to investigate educational outcomes.

A talk about how the RSA Animate series seeks to engage learners in innovative ways and how it draws from new research on cognitive engagement.

I haven't used it in a formal way. Although I find myself very engaged in the content. I've seen some of the animations that are other talks that they converted to an animation, and it's really incredible how much more engaging it becomes with fairly simple, yet beautiful graphics.