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Thought provoking analysis of higher ed finances, and the prospects for emerging technology models to help "fix" the broken business model. By William Bowen, former President of Princeton and the Mellon Foundation.

""No one's got the model that's going to work yet," said James Grimmelmann, a New York Law School professor who specializes in computer and Internet law. "I expect all the current ventures to fail, because the expectations are too high. People think something will catch on like wildfire. But more likely, it's maybe a decade later that somebody figures out how to do it and make money." "

Ok... I am not a gaming person, but if you take the level of detail in the graphics that this company says it can deliver, and combine it with the new LEAP Motion detector I will post next ... wow does this seem to take virtual reality to a new level.

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..

The MIT Technology Review just interviewed Khan and talked about his vision for the future, sustainability, and business models.

I just found a current MOOC, highly relevant to the conversation in class today. --free and accepting new participants now. "Weekly Topics: Change pressures: What is influencing higher education? (Oct 8-14) Net pedagogies: New models of teaching and learning (Oct 15-21) Entrepreneurship and commercial activity in education (Oct 22-28) Big data and Analytics (Oct 29-Nov 4) Leadership in Education (Nov 4-11) Distributed Research: new models of inquiry (Nov 12- 18)"

Interesting to see the flipped classroom approach in a prestigious medical school environment

article coming out of the Innosight Institute, a think-tank based in San Francisco linked to Clay Christensen's work on disruptive innovation, on how RTTT has "the potential to reset American schools' relationship with technology by encouraging a transformation from a  one-size-fits all schooling model to one that can customize affordably for each student's unique learning needs." linked to the backchannel discussion on 9/4 on possible ways to facilitate positive and effective integration/implementation of edtech

Contrasting perspective on what is needed for personalized learning - related to the NETP's section on Learning 

An estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools where their instruction and interaction is completely online. There are many benefits to this model: lower overhead, anywhere/anytime learning, meeting students where they are...yet the students in these full-time online schools consistently fall short of their peers in traditional schools. Gives us pause to consider what is lost in the online learning environment and what are the essential parts of face to face learning that cannot be replicated online..

This article contradicts one of my favorite quotes from ISTE 2011 - "The Killer App for 2011? The Teacher" I agree Steve, while it seems to be more and more the norm, economics shouldn't be a major determinant in alternatives to good education. Would they do the same for health care? Perhaps Siri can diagnose and prescribe treatment based on patient symptom input into an app?

Tennessee Technology Centers (a "career-training program" that is state funded) is using strictly enforced scheduling to help retain students with 1 in 4 odds of completing their program. The school is taking the opposite approach that most higher education schools take. Instead of having the freedom to create their own schedule, they work with the school to determine a schedule from the beginning which is permanent throughout the duration of their time at the school and is strictly enforced. The school is hoping to increase retention of students in 1 to 2 year programs that have low graduation rates, and produce more graduates in emerging technology fields.

The role technology can play in expanding the time during which learning can take place.

Another article about "expanded learning time" both online and via community-based "brick and mortar" locations like libraries, YMCA, and Boys & Girls Clubs. "Out-of-school programs can be strong partners for schools who want to leverage expanded learning time to help their students achieve global competence. Youth-serving organizations share the broad mission to promote student success in work and life in the 21st century. Out-of-school program organization and management is often based on an asset model that values diversity. In order to attract and retain participants, out-of-school programs are centered around youth engagement through hands-on and experiential learning, often with a focus on 21st century skills, service learning, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, and others."

I wonder what Helen Haste would think of this organization . . .

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.

This article shows the dark underbelly of the educational policy world as it relates to technology. As schools are increasingly adopting online learning models in classes, companies are predictably lining up to get money from the movement. However, there are many companies who are taking it a step further and lobbying for policies that do not have children's best interests in mind and which operate under the simplistic and misguided assumption that "schools will not need teachers once computers become good enough." It should give us pause to consider what needs to be done in these early stages to prevent the edTech movement from falling into the wrong hands and killing our schools.

Here is a highly populated list of open course offerings at various universities on the internet. This is certainly going to be disruptive to the pay-for-learning model of higher education. Some issues: does it make sense to attach some sort of certification of completion? Is it feasible or desirable to offer complete open courses, or would it be better to make the offerings more granular in nature? Should users be able to remix offerings from various courses to create custom courses?

This is fantastic! Thank, Steve.

New Jersey's hybrid Charter schools test out new model by combining online and classroom instructions in the toughest cities.

Technology isn't explicit in this article, but it is ever-present in regards to this author's re-thinking of the classic book report. Instead of "same old, same old", this article suggests that students should be remixing the information they gather from books and recreating it in different ways - 21st century skills!!! "Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we've adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature."