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"MOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems."

Very interesting! Thanks. "MOOCs and MOOC-type courses have added a new dimension to the educational landscape by strengthening the non-formal educational space and providing opportunities to experiment with the disaggregated components of the educational experience"

After watching the Willinsky video, this hit home even more. I think the value of quality education is extremely important, and creating a "global village" of learning is still in its growing pains. Having a face-to-face instructor/professor/facilitator lets you ask the questions that pop to mind and being in a classroom setting allows an idea to flow and develop into other ideas. There are a lot of social media tools that are familiar to a lot of students living in a Western culture, but those social tools are not always available to developing countries; many do not have access to schools or even have a computer - as this article indicates, MOOCs are certainly a venue that opens learning opportunities for those who do not have access to learning in a formal environment, but may have access to the internet. What I particularly found interesting were the various MOOC categories - Gateway: MOOCs for prepping to get into higher learning; Research showcase: promote an institute's research areas; Professional skills: MOOCs for those who need to "upskill" or specialize…and there are others. The main reason for taking this course was to improve my knowledge of what social media is out there (MOOCs are part of it), how it is being used, and how useful is this "new" media is within the publishing realm. It is a challenge.

El curso esta a punto de finalizar. Existe mucha retroalimentación en los post publicados y mucho por aprender.

one solution to help inequality problem?

Good crowd-funding project that tries to help solve the digital divide problem by providing infrastructure to those who lack the money to purchase a computer. In addition to providing the physical infrastructure of the computer to allow those without one to catch up to society, perhaps another solution to conquer the digital divide is to educate those who have just received computers how to use the internet to look for information, consume, produce and distribute the information.

Honestly I think public libraries need WAY more computers.

Beacons are a new type of device that could change the way people shop in stores and revolutionize how retailers collect consumer data and interact with shoppers. Retailers can use beacons to trigger location-based features on customers' smartphone apps, including targeted coupons, store maps, and hands-free payments.

seems like there are some clear privacy issues here but I'm pretty conflicted on the use of these as it is advantageous for all parties when consumers allow businesses to target them more efficiently

This paper throws light on the growth and development of open repositories registered with OpenDOAR database. The study explores various facets of open repositories and tries to present a lucid picture of their overall development. The study provides a detailed description of repositories in terms of continent, country and subject wise distribution. The study further delves deep into the Asian contributions and brings to light detailed profiles of Asia

An investigation into the low levels of published African scholarly research by Emerald. Although this study is from 2008, the findings are still valid even in 2014.

By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.