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As virtually every form of media from newspapers to television shows becomes more socially aware, the book remains stubbornly anti-social. Despite the rapid growth in e-books and the launch of a number of services designed to add social features to books, the act of reading is still a fairly solitary thing.

Of course, the rules are often in flux, making it difficult for to stay up to speed-which reinforces the need for a digital literacy program for teachers and administrators. It's not enough to impose rules on how not to use social media; teachers should be required at the start of every school year to learn how to use social networks and other tools effectively in the classroom, and how to maintain privacy settings for both professional and personal accounts.

"The LMS needs to become a mixing panel for all the other platforms, where the teacher as a DJ for learning, can direct learning activities and community interactions. "

This blog post touches on some of the missing social aspects of the LMS.

"We have to figure out a way to use it engagingly and teach students when it s appropriate and when it's not appropriate to be doing that.""

we find ourselves in an environment that is fast evolving from one based on one-to-many relationships to one based on many-to-many relationships, powered by social networking sites, consumer and cloud technologies, and mobile devices. In this brave new world, we CIOs have a lot less authority and control than we expected.

"several of the Kaleidoscope schools started using the rSmart Academic LMS, built on the Sakai open academic environment, which allows faculty to pull Kaleidoscope modules into their courses and add localizations. It also allows users to access the reservoir of openly licensed, shared content used in the Kaleidoscope courses. "This is the only LMS designed for the era of open sharing of content and a collaborative approach to curriculum design, so it could not be a more perfect match," says Thanos. "It allows for social connections and you can bring your academic content into your profile." "

Now, with $16 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the two professors officially launched Coursera, their new online education company that includes partnerships with Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania to offer web-based classes on the Coursera platform for free. A total of 37 undergraduate and graduate-level courses across a broad range of disciplines will launch this spring.

"MindTap is well beyond an eBook, a homework solution or digital supplement, a resource center website, a course delivery platform or a Learning Management System. More than 70% of students surveyed said it was unlike anything they have seen before. MindTap is a new personal learning experience that combines all your digital assets - readings, multimedia, activities, and assessments- into a singular learning path to improve student outcomes."

Check out the "why this matters", public vs private discussion.