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"Hi, Today we made some changes at Ning. I want to share with you the email Jason Rosenthal, our CEO, sent to all Ning employees: Team, When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what's working, what's not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success. My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us. So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy. As a consequence of this change, I have also made the very tough decision to reduce the size of our team from 167 people to 98 people. As hard as this is to do, I am confident that this is the right decision for our company, our business, and our customers. Marc and I will work diligently with everyone affected by this to help them find great opportunities at other companies. I've never seen a more talented and devoted team, and it has been my privilege to get to know and work with each and every one of you over the last 18 months. We'll use today to say goodbye to our friends and teammates who will be leaving the company. Tomorrow, I will take you through, in detail, our plans for the next three months and our new focus. Thanks, Jason Rosenthal I know many of you will have que

Monday, January 25, 2016 Ben Williamson "The world's largest publisher of educational textbooks and resources, Pearson, recently extended its work into digital media and learning. As well as producing innovative new digital learning resources and platforms, Pearson is also positioning itself as a major center for the analysis of educational big data. This has implications for how learning is going to be conceptualized in the near future, and begs big questions about how the private ownership of educational data might impact emerging understandings and explanatory theories of the learning process itself."

Del 26 gennaio 2016 - e due giorni prima, Andreas Formiconi pubblicava già http://iamarf.org/2016/01/23/se-il-progresso-e-solo-business-non-va-bene/ su partneriati dubbi tra scuole e altri business....

Andreas Formiconi, 23 gennaio 2016 "...Ma che senso ha parlare di individuazione di tecnologie sostenibili e di scambio di innovazioni fra scuole se allo stesso tempo prepariamo il terreno a quella che è una vera e propria colonizzazione da parte delle multinazionali IT?"

"Published on March 18th, 2013 | by Guest Author [Kate Lee] Infographics are becoming an increasingly popular method of communicating information quickly and clearly. Great designs can reduce the complexity of information, making a process, product or service easily understandable and accessible to the general public. And a good infographic means that all of that information is presented in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to boot. But have infographics become too good at streamlining information? Have they become the fast food of graphic design - quickly digestible, but lacking in substance? Infographics: Guilty As Charged The web has lots of criticisms levelled at infographics and it's true that many are poorly created, failing to fulfil their purpose, using Papyrus or other crimes against design. The main complaints when it comes to infographics are: 1. Creates confusion: the data is presented in a manner that takes a long time to interpret, is difficult to follow and creates additional complexity instead of providing clarity. 2. Inaccurate information: [...] 3. Too long: [...] 4. General ugliness: [...] The problem with infographics is that so many people think it's easy to create them, when in fact it's a particular subset of skills in an already specialised profession.[...] Data Visualisation Requires Thinking That being said, there are truly great infographics out there that tick all the boxes: accurate information, presented in an effective visual manner that helps the audience interpret and understand quickly. And so we come to the point of this post: with complex information rendered so comprehensible, without the need to read long reports and with the ability to look at pictures and share it with all your friends - is there a danger that infographics cause the audience to stop thinking? In short, the answer is no. In most cases where the audience needs to think, the data isn't simple anyway. The mission of infographics is to re

Titolo volutamente provocativo. Ottima presentazione delle "infographics", di cosa dovrebbero e potrebbero essere ma purtroppo spesso non sono, e degli risvolti cognitivi del loro uso.

"Livemocha is a social network service that supports language learning through audio-visual lessons and peer tutoring tools. Launched in September 2007, the platform has over 5 million registered members from over 200 countries. Lessons are provided for 36 different languages. While the standard lessons are freely accessible for registered users, the platform also offers "premium content" for a fee. Livemocha is more than just "Rosetta Stone on the Web." A unique selling point of the educational Web community is its collaborative approach to language learning: Members of the Livemocha community do not only learn a foreign language, they also tutor other community members in their native language. Users are encouraged to form learning tandems and offer feedback on their partner's speaking or writing exercises. The Livemocha platform supports this peer learning practice through comment features, voice recording and social awareness tools. For ETC Journal, I interviewed Clint Schmidt, Livemocha's Vice President of Marketing and Products. Clint has an impressive success record of developing marketing and product functions for a variety of high-growth Internet companies, including Half.com, eBay and ZoomIn.com, India's leading photo sharing and printing site. Clint holds a BSE in Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania."

"Our mission is to promote and provide equal access to communication and learning through described and captioned educational media. The ultimate goal of the DCMP is for accessible media to be an integral tool in the teaching and learning process for all stakeholders in the educational community, including students, educators and other school personnel, parents, service providers, businesses, and agencies. The DCMP supports the U.S. Department of Education Strategic Plan for 2014-2018 by committing to the following goals: Ensuring that students (early learning through grade 12) who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind have the opportunity to achieve the standards of academic excellence. Advocating for equal access to educational media as well as the establishment and maintenance of quality standards for captioning and description by service providers. Providing a collection of free-loan described and captioned educational media. Furnishing information and research about accessible media. Acting as a gateway to Internet resources related to accessibility. Adapting and developing new media and technologies that assist students in obtaining and using available information."

Posted on July 11, 2013 by JimS By Harry Keller "...I don't really see the rush, the extreme hurry exhibited by districts to buy expensive iPads, and forgo other expenditures to do so, when this development in computing devices is still playing itself out. The next great device could be announced tomorrow and could put iPads on the shelf until Apple manages to come out with a newer model. Manufacturers are scrambling to entice consumers to their particular device, while almost entirely ignoring the problems that schools face. When a school chooses widespread adoption of a consumer or business product, it's taking a risk. Often, it's bowing to parental pressures at the same time. While we should applaud schools for overcoming traditional education inertia, we should also realize that some of these new things are just fads or early examples of an incompletely developed new technology. The fact that so many districts are going in so many directions indicates strongly that we don't know where these trends will end. Until we do, I think that wholesale adoption of iPads by high schools is a mistake. My specialty is science. I have yet to see a great science app for high school on an iPad. Mostly, they're just games, animations, and other ordinary stuff. My disclaimer here is that I run a company that puts out an online science application that I consider to be great and am currently porting to the Chromebook, iPad, and Android tablets. Vendors have to cover all bases eventually. I'd rather not have to spend all of this money on fads, but major customers are demanding it. The result will be higher prices."

Capisco, ma sai com'è: se utilizzi una piattaforma unica e costruita per essere ben integrata, ti troverai sempre senza (seri) problemi, al di lla di quale sia il sistema che adotti. Per quanto riguarda le tue esperienze pregresse non so proprio che dirti: per questioni legate alla clientela (ovvio che un consulente non può che adattarsi!) opero da sempre su sistemi senza la i davanti e non mi riconosco nella tua storia tormentata... Che ciò possa dipendere dal fatto che mentre da una parte ci mette le mani chiunque (magari malamente) dall'altra il tutto risulta piuttosto "blindato"? La mia è solo un'ipotesi sia chiaro! Ma appunto: pur seguendo una certa logica, non posso lamentare i problemi che hai avuto tu. Per "certa logica" intendo dire che non mi sono mai fiondato ad aggiornare un sistema operativo con l'ultima versione appena uscita (anzi: per la verità attendo sempre almeno il service pack 1 quando non il 2: attualmente lavoro ancora con Windows XP!!!), ne ammetto facilmente e con leggerezza l'installazione di utilities, add-onn, plugin ed amenità varie. Io però noto che, usando questo ambiente e software prevalentemente opensource, non ho mai riscontrato problemi a scambiare informazioni con altri, nemmeno con gli utenti con le "i" davanti da quali pur arriva in genere robaccia carica di fronzoli quantomeno inutili quando non fuorvianti. In ogni caso lungi da me criticare chi opta per apple: libero di farlo se si tratta di una scelta! Per la scuola invece sarei sinceramente molto più propenso ad utilizzare ambienti più aperti, meno costosi e meno "blinda utenti"!

Ma, sarà ma io non ho problemi nemmeno a interfacciarmi con utenti che usano altre piattaforme. E la mia esperienza negativa con Windows (o con Winzzoz come lo chiamano a volte in Toscana) è condivisa da tutti i miei colleghi che si trovano a usare i computer dei nostri laboratori. Forse i nostri tecnici non fanno corretta manutenzione (però anche noi abbiamo XP e non installiamo con facilità utilities varie, perché la password ce l'hanno solo gli amministratori, cioè i nostri ITP). Ci stiamo trovando bene invece con Linux, gli stessi vecchi PC con Linux girano 10 volte meglio che con Windows, quindi in una mia ipotetica classifica, il sistema operativo di Bill lo metterei in coda. Però hai ragione, per la scuola (soprattutto per i PC), sistemi e software aperti sono sicuramente la soluzione migliore. Via libera al pinguino ;-)

Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the E-books Press Conference Washington, D.C. ~ Wednesday, April 11, 2012 "Earlier today, we filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Apple and five different book publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. In response to our allegations, three of these publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster - agreed to a proposed settlement. If approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department's antitrust concerns with these companies, and would require them to grant retailers - such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble - the freedom to reduce the prices of their e-book titles. The settlement also requires the companies to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers. In addition, the companies will be prohibited for two years from placing constraints on retailers' ability to offer discounts to consumers. They will also be prohibited from conspiring or sharing competitively sensitive information with their competitors for five years. And each is required to implement a strong antitrust compliance program. These steps are appropriate - and essential in ensuring a competitive marketplace. Beginning in the summer of 2009, we allege that executives at the highest levels of the companies included in today's lawsuit - concerned that e-book sellers had reduced prices - worked together to eliminate competition among stores selling e-books, ultimately increasing prices for consumers. As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles. During regular, near-quarterly meetings, we allege that publishing company executives discussed confidential business and competitive matters - including Amazon's e-book retailing practices - as part of a conspiracy

"The easiest & fastest way to tell stories with animation. Muvizu's 3D animation software is a great way to exercise your imagination, engage your audience and even promote your business. Muvizu has everything you need to tell an animated story from drag and drop customizable characters and pre-built sets, to libr"

"We now require captcha on many social features, such as following people, joining groups, etc. For a very nominal fee, you can upgrade yourself to "Social Membership," which would grant you full social features without capcha, plus a lot of other goodies. We expect to stop the vast majority of the spammers with this simple measure. We'd like to elaborate more about Social Membership and its pricing and our thoughts behind the decisions. As long-time Diigo users know, Diigo is a personal knowledge management tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community on the other hand. While it is perfectly fine to use Diigo solely as the former, we do believe that the value of the knowledge-sharing community could be substantial, as the number of active users increases, and as the spam is minimized. As a result, we have decided to set the social membership annual fee at $5/year on Oct 1, 2014, and will increase the price gradually thereafter according to a pre-determined formula, as the number of active social members increases. To reward existing users, an attractive promotion price of $2/year will be available until Oct. 1, 2014. For future years, you will continue to pay the low annual price you paid in the first year, as long as your credit card stay valid for automatic renewal. We have also taken this opportunity to re-adjust our pricing plan to better align users needs with our business model. Existing basic and premium users will be automatically upgraded to Standard in the new pricing plan."

Attenzione a quel "new pricing plan" https://www.diigo.com/premium che limita drasticamente il numero dei gruppi per le formule meno care, ma non è chiaro cosa succederà ai gruppi creati con formula gratuita.

"Hi, I'm Paul-Olivier Dehaye, professor of mathematics at the University of Zürich.This course is called Massive Teaching.It's a course about MOOCs. MOOCs in themselves are quite controversial,especially as far as pedagogy is concerned.In this course in the next three weeks, I want to give you some background about MOOCs but also widen this debate to include technology and business aspects of MOOCs. ..."

From the "Instructor Log" section of Teaching goes massive: new skills required by Paul-Olivier Dehaye See https://etherpad.mozilla.org/pr8ZtLXODg and http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2014/07/09/congrats-to-paul-olivier-dehaye-massiveteaching/

... This course only spans three weeks.The structure will be quite simple.In the first week, I'll take a mostly positive tone about MOOCs, describe the promise that many people see in them, including me. In the second week, I'll take a closer look at the technology and survey the copyright aspects. In the third week, I'll discuss the business aspects and maybe a bit of science fiction. In fact I'll prepare some material for the third week, but I'll be ready to add muchmore to it than that, mostly in response to questions that will intermittently pop up in the forums.It's quite a tight schedule, so it might be that atthe last minute, I settle for more text then I originally intended. In any case, this is just the first run of the course.As soon as possible, I hope to rerun it, this time with a bit more material, that I can reintegrate, to offer a slightly longer course.

From Week 1 Lecture Videos of "Teaching goes massive: new skills required" by Paul-Olivier Dehaye See https://etherpad.mozilla.org/pr8ZtLXODg and http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2014/07/09/congrats-to-paul-olivier-dehaye-massiveteaching/

Chris Hoofnagle, director of BCLT's privacy programs | 3/6/13 "...We need to be less infatuated with "the cloud," which to some extent is a marketing fad. Many of the putative benefits of the cloud are disclaimed in these services' terms of service. For instance, a 2009 survey of 31 contracts found that, "…In effect, a number of providers of consumer-oriented Cloud services appear to disclaim the specific fitness of their services for the purpose(s) for which many customers will have specifically signed up to use them." The same researchers found that providers' business models were related to the generosity of terms. This militates towards providers that charge some fee for service as opposed to "free" ones that monetize user data. We should charge our IT professionals with the duty of documenting problems with outsourced services. To more objectively understand the cloud phenomenon, we should track the real costs associated with outsourcing, including outages, the costs of managing the relationship with Google, and the technical problems that users experience. Outsourcing is not costless. We could learn that employees have simply been transferred from the operation of CalMail to the management of bMail. We should not assume that systems mean fewer people-they may appropriately require meaningful staffing to fulfill our needs. As the expiration date of system wide Google contract approaches in June 2015, these metrics will help us make an economical decision. Finally, there are technical approaches that, if effective, could blunt, but not completely eliminate, the privacy problems created by cloud services. Encryption tools, such as CipherCloud, exist to mask data from Google itself. This can help hide the content of messages, reduce data mining risks from Google, and cause the government to have to come to Berkeley officials to gain access to content. The emergence of these services indicates that there is a shared concern about s

Attenzione alla data: alcune cose potrebbero essere cambiate nel frattempo.

"...Takeaway tips: * Educate your kids about the creepy, unsuspected power of data mining * Ask your school if they are using GAFE or any other online service provider whose business model includes advertising * If you are currently using GAFE, remember to always log-out completely when you leave your computer"

Attenzione alla data: alcune cose potrebbero essere cambiate nel frattempo.

"Gilly Salmon - Professor at the University of Western Australia - Australia Gilly Salmon invited us to observe and explore technologies of the future and bring them to today, in the service of student achievements and business advantage More info: http://bit.ly/1YkCGOf"

"Allan Päll - Secretary General of the European Youth Forum - Belgium Miles Berry - Principal lecturer in Computing Education at the University of Roehampton - UK Jo Swinson - Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills in the UK's coalition Government of 2010-2015 - UK Pedro De Bruyckere - Educational scientist at the Artevelde Hogeschool - Belgium Are we equipping young people with the skills they need to participate, contribute and compete in our technology-oriented society? What specific new skills are needed? Are schools and universities the right places to teach these so-called '21st century skills'? On December 4, OEB 2015 experts debated on the motion "This House believes 21st Century skills aren't being taught - and they should be" More info: http://bit.ly/20zkM8R"

"for cooperating with the online learning provider Coursera. (...) We regard this cooperation of the Munich universities with Coursera as a marketing operation. The two universities can present themselves globally together with top international universities. Conversely, Coursera adorns itself with their names. It seems that data protection has not been given much thought. Likewise, we miss a critical discussion of who owns the content produced and who profits from it. By the way, taking Coursera courses is still voluntary for the students. This BigBrotherAward is meant as a warning to colleges and universities not to make participation in MOOCs offered by privacy-ignoring companies a mandatory way to earn study credits. Actually it's bad enough that education increasingly becomes a commodity as publicly financed institutions of higher education distribute their offerings via commercial providers. If an appropriate European MOOC platform does not exist, then it is the the universities' duty to create such a platform. By giving a BigBrotherAward to TUM and LMU Munich, we would like to remind both universities and all other education institutions that the long-term business model of such "education providers" hinges on contracts in which the students are not the customers of the MOOC provider, they are the product being sold."

"While about two thirds of respondents to a 2011 survey had not applied to any state, now about two thirds have applied to, at least, one state. * More institutions are deciding not to apply in some states. Those most cited: MN (22.4%), MA (19.5%), AR (18.0%), MD (14.6%), and AL (14.1%). This will have an impact on student choice. * Institutions are averaging about half of an FTE dedicated to authorization compliance. We believe that most did not have such staff in 2011."

Ben venga la didattica digitale, ma dentro che ci mettiamo?!

Francesco, perché non metti qualche altro tag? Lo so che sei un affabulatore con le spalle al muro ;-) però, che so, didattica, digitale, web 2.0 ecc.

Agli ordini capo! :-) .. è che come affabulatore inizio a chiedermi che senso abbia il web 2.0 che è (marxisticamente) uno sfruttamento gratuito del lavoro altrui e mediaticamente una bufala. Allora ripiegherei su didattica che però mi pare povero rispetto ai concetti che intendevo esprimere, mentre digitale mi porta a pensare alle impronte.... Ok: li aggiungo tutti e la mollo lì! ;-)

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