Perhaps if academics had to tweet their writing, their writing would be better.

Why Academics Stink at Writing http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Academics-Writing-Stinks/148989/

"But the familiarity of bad academic writing raises a puzzle. Why should a profession that trades in words and dedicates itself to the transmission of knowledge so often turn out prose that is turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?"

Did you see that Khan is now available in French? I received an email from them the other day (below) so it is now available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. With each translation, the number of of people open to learning via Khan is exponentially increased - a quick google search indicates there are:

English speakers - 508 million
Spanish - 500 million
Portuguese - 191 million
French - 136 million

With over a billion Mandarin speakers, I wonder if/when we might hear news of that translation.

We are proud to announce that the entire Khan Academy experience is now available in French at fr.khanacademy.org thanks to the efforts of Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries without Borders).


-------Khan email----------------------
French is our third language beyond English (joining Spanish and Portuguese), bringing Khan Academy even closer to making a world-class education available for anyone, anywhere.

To use Khan Academy in one of these languages, visit your account settings.

Share the news on social media or forward this email to your friends and family!

Hi, something that we seem to be are acutely aware of in Canada in the higher education space is personal identifying information being stored on servers located in the US. Information stored on servers located in the USA are subject to American state and federal law.

This limits the use of open technologies and a lot of closed ones as well for many academic institutions due to the inability to manage the consent stipulations - most opt to play it safe and not use something if they cannot guarantee it meets FIPPA as potential fines are quite large. To further complicate, each Canadian province has its own privacy laws, with British Columbia being the strictest right now.

I'm curious if other countries have any national/provincial privacy laws that need to be taken into consideration and how they might be affecting you and your learning.

Here are some links:

Tony Bates - Canadian perspective on privacy
http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/03/25/cloud-based-educational-technology-and-privacy-a-canadian-perspective/

BC FIPPA
http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/LOC/complete/statreg/--%20F%20--/Freedom%20of%20Information%20and%20Protection%20of%20Privacy%20Act%20[RSBC%201996]%20c.%20165/00_Act/96165_03.xml#section30.1

UBC fact sheet on storage of personal information outside of Canada
http://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2014/01/Fact-Sheet-Disclosure-Outside-Canada.pdf

PS - This is my very first Diigo post. I'm working on an ipad - why is the comment box so frustratingly small?