This is a review of David Weinberger's new book, Too Big to Know by Cory Doctorow. The book deals with the changing nature of knowledge in the emerging information environment.
This article discusses the important role that biostatistician play in dealing with the evolving world of big data in biological and biomedical research.
Unfortunately, when you say big data in educational circles it applies only to data about educational outcomes not students tapping into scientific research data.
This will be interesting to track. A joint call for proposals from NSF and NIH. From the call, "BIGDATA seeks proposals that develop and evaluate core technologies and tools that take advantage of available collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science, biomedical research, and engineering."