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Online masters program in free software. This seems like a good idea.

Edmodo And Common Sense Media Partner (the authors of the 0-8 report some of us read for Joe Blatt's class this week) to offer free teaching tools based on Dr. Howard Gardner's work at HGSE. The partnership provides teachers with a set of student activities based on Common Sense Media's free K-12 curriculum, "Digital Literacy and Citizenship in a Connected Culture," for the Edmodo platform. The curriculum introduces the basics of using social networks and other digital technologies safely, responsibly and respectfully and is based on the work of Dr. Howard Gardner and the GoodPlay Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

MassCue article about the effectiveness of Student Response Systems by a tech consultant / researcher for vendor Turning Response Systems (who sells the clickers that HGSE uses). I'm interested in comparing these systems with the FREE adhoc web-based system offered by Socrative.com, co-founded by HGSE TIE grad Ben Berté.

James- very interesting article about Student Response Systems. The clickers are a great tool to facilitate student participation in a teacher-centered classroom, and many of us have seen the Turning Point clickers in action. And they really do help with engaging everyone in the audience. Remember that diversity seminar during orientation week? The rich discussion that ensued in a crowd of 650 was really made possible because of the opening survey questions, the clicker interactivity, and the discussions that sprung up at each individual table which then mushroomed out to the rest of the crowd. I never thought a diversity seminar could be that engaging, and the clickers were definitely a key part of that. My only criticism of the article is that it seems to be pushing hardware capabilities over sound pedagogy, which is always a danger in learning about emerging technologies. Question though: is Socrative not entirely free? it seems like a great tool with many interactive capabilities, ideal for many classroom settings and activities.

Steve I agree the article did have a strong sense of hardware pushing. It was written by a research on the the vendor's payroll. I've changed "free" to FREE; I intended the quotes to be for emphasis, not skepticism. Socrative is indeed free.

An interview with Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, a free online university. I think one really interesting part is that NYU agreed that students who finished their first year could apply to NYU Abu Dhabi and finish their free education if accepted! So it's like a portal or proving ground...but for a traditional university.

more free online courses from MIT. purchasable certificate for satisfactory completion. grading by fellow students, or computers? will this allow creative, open-ended work to be done for grading?

the access to online courses is great for those seeking affordable education options. My guess, however, is that design of these courses is going to vary -- the design needs to be held up to high standards for course content to be usable.

In Disrupting Class, one of the predictions that Clay Christenson makes is that classroom content in the future will not come from traditional textbooks, but from students and teachers who contribute user-generated content for learning. Here is an example of a site that allows users to download free textbooks. This is further proof that once the information is out there for all to see, it is going to be more and more difficult to prevent people from spreading ideas and circumventing the charge-for-information model that is currently out there.

California collage students to get free digital textbooks as early as next year.

full disclosure: classmate Alex Schoenfeld first shared this with the us in the TIE facebook group :). But it brings an interesting trend in the adoption and pricing of mobile apps: Article outlining what lots of us know when it comes to moblie apps and pricing - free, $1, and $2 are the price-points that sell, and allow us to try out an app with minimal regret. But with the rise of more and more high-quailty, high-profile, and high-budget educatioanl apps, will the pricing structure change? Will parents and educators be willing to spend the prices of traditional computer software ($50 or more?) for really great mobile apps? The article brings up an interesting model that seems to already be coming to life looking at how apps are being sold and updated lately: "Donahoo and Russell propose there's a better way: subscriptions and content expansion packs.  Launchpad Toys follows the latter tact. The initial price the Toontastic app for $3 (though it's currently free). Users can use that fully functioning app, or choose to add additional characters and themes with $.99 expansion packs. This way, they contend, costs are controlled; it's cheap for parents and children to evaluate an app, and the model encourages regular updates."

Access to Wikipedia free for all 70 million Orange mobile customers in Africa & Middle East, incurs no mobile data usage, no data plan even required. Access to information seen as a "public good"

MIT announcing next Monday that they will launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world. This course will not offer M.I.T. deploma, but will offer a M.I.T. certificate of completion. How will this impact for-profit online universities, such as, University of Phoenix?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) - More online courses from top universities. Not surprisingly, most people signing up are from other countries. How long these courses will remain free? At some point, will the universities try to make money from online courses?

Free iPad app for ESL learners ranked by community member votes

For EDC research group

teacher developer available for free web 2.0 style on iTunes.

Physical toys can be recognized by the iPad touch screen, utilized by free game app. The interaction (maybe requirement?) of physical toys, that must be purchased, in order to utilize a free app... curious to see if this kind of interaction will gain footing in education

Portal is a fun, innovative 3D first-person game known for its unique physics gameplay and sense of humor. It's over 4 years old now, but still enjoyable and clever. It's been used in education as a way for students to explore physics, and also as a gameworld ripe for student content creation. The game is available as a free download for PC/Mac through 9/20.

Free online tutoring for kids that enables them to talk to a real person and share a "whiteboard" space.

Kind of ironic, but "old tech" using new tech to promote sales of old tech. Basically Elsevier is giving students in an edX course a free, static version of one of its textbooks. Students then see a link to purchase a discounted, dynamic version--and it seemed to bump up sales! Also interesting is that edX gets a cut of the book sales--maybe another avenue for them to become sustainable, in addition to charging for certification.

Seems to be getting some coverage on this topic lately. Interesting comment here. Probably reactions many disruptive innovation driver will face. Doesnt mean they are failing though. Reactions from their users seem to be relatively muted. It is the skeptics and traditional players who is making big deal out of it. 'Obviously, the company does not want to say that its free content is cannibalizing the revenue generated from charging students and institutions for premium features and content, but it's clear that the company didn't quite get the balance right.' 'Unfortunately, although Flat World would never admit it, this announcement certainly serves as validation of the doubt over Open Educational Resources (OER) as a business concept.' Whatever you do though, the business model should be sustainable..

Invoking a decades old law that requires any degree granting academic institution to obtain a license to operate in state (and pay a hefty fee for said license), Minnesota has banned universities from offering free online courses through education site Coursera, prompting the site to issue this notice to all Minnesota users: Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so.