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"At the same time, MOOCs called into question our basic assumptions about college. Free access to content from prestigious institutions revealed that content didn't need to be proprietary. Without having to waste time re-creating the same lectures and class materials, particularly for lower-division courses, many professors saw the opportunity to be even more connected and hands-on in order to make existing content come alive for students. Despite the intense trepidation that technology would somehow replace teachers, it became clear that MOOCs didn't preempt interaction; instead, they forced more contact and accountability on both the student and the teacher."

"Starting today, teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom. Based on the requests we receive, we'll be inviting a limited number of educators to try Classroom in about a month. By September, Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education. Since we want to make sure Classroom plays well with others, if you're a developer or partner, sign up to learn more about integrating with Classroom."

"Vi Hart is back at it again. Hart has a knack for demystifying complex concepts with her visually-rich mathematical videos. She has previously tackled Stravinsky and Schoenberg's 12-Tone Compositions and the Space-Time Continuum. This week, she's taking on the concept of Net Neutrality. The FCC will soon consider whether it wants to end the era of net neutrality and the open web - something that could have far-reaching consequences for you. The web keeps getting more and more corporatized (even by companies that claim to support net neutrality). And by killing net neutrality, the FCC can officially ensure that big corporations run the show."

"For the past five Mondays, Mr. Musselman and Mr. Schersten have been holding an after-school coding club for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. The students used Hopscotch, a free, introductory coding app using visual programming "blocks" to instruct the behavior of objects on screen."

Google+ isn't as big as Facebook, but it's bigger than Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and all the rest. But size is irrelevant at this point. The fact is that it's way too big and active to kill. Google+ provides the best information Google has at its disposal for understanding hundreds of millions of users' social relationships, interests, identity and product and brand affinities. Google+ supports serious initiatives in the company like Android, Chrome, Chromebooks, Search and more.

But Facebook is the network Ello wants to kill. Its manifesto is straightforward: "You are not a product." Ello is ad-free and doesn't believe in tracking your activity to sell to advertisers. But that isn't why Ello is popular. The network is invite-only, which is driving demand. People who have signed up are inviting their friends en masse to make the site worth using.

"Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind, said Sondergaard. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text. This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner."

"Digital medicine is poised to transform biomedical research, clinical practice and the commercial sector. Here we introduce a monthly column from R&D/venture creation firm PureTech tracking digital medicine's emergence."

"As to the future of digital learning, Bailey predicts increasing opportunities for students to take course online or in blended learning environment, more options for state-approved online classes, and a focus on competency-based learning. "State policy can remove roadblocks to students' digital learning opportunities, Bailey said"

"Writing learning outcomes is very difficult for faculty who were never trained to think about their teaching in such terms.  We are great at describing what content our course will cover; we are pretty good at knowing that we expect our students to master a certain amount of content or skill set by the end of the semester.  We are terrible at framing our expectations for student learning in terms of learning outcomes, with all of our learning activities in the course aligned to those learning outcomes.  We are even worse at measuring learning outcomes.  We conflate grades with learning outcomes on the regular."

"Under Chairman of the Board Martin Lipton and President John Sexton, New York University has been to operate as a real estate development/management business with a predatory higher-education side venture. A group of 400 faculty members at NYU, Faculty Against the Sexton Plan (FASP), have been working for years against what Pam Martens has called "running NYU as a tyrannical slush fund for privileged interests." FASP just published a devastating document, The Art of the Gouge, which describes how NYU engages in a mind-numbing range of tricks and traps to extract as much in fees as possible from students, while at the same time failing to invest in and often degrading the educational "product"."

"To start college, the typical student must meet admission requirements (if any), enroll and pay tuition. But what if anyone anywhere could try out a prominent university's classes for a small fee and wait until the end to decide whether to pay tuition for credit toward a diploma? That is one of the groundbreaking ideas behind an Arizona State University plan, announced Wednesday, to offer a freshman curriculum online through the nonprofit Web site called edX."

"Hapkit is an open-hardware haptic device designed to be very low-cost and easy to assemble. Hapkit allows users to input motions and feel programmed forces in one degree of freedom. This enables interactive simulation of virtual environments that represent realistic physics (such as springs and dampers) and creative new touch sensations (like textures and buttons). The Hapkit can be assembled using household tools, costs less than $50 for all components, including the microcontroller board, and is easily set up and programmed by novices."

"When Facebook users see favorable comments on the social media site about a political candidate, those opinions positively influence their own views of the politician, while unfavorable comments have a negative effect, according to a new paper by University of Delaware researchers."

"More than another literature or creative writing course, these students needed a guide to the twisted subterranean landscape beneath their plugged-in social lives. Texting seemed like the logical place to drop our first pin. Even though it hasn't yet seduced researchers the way Facebook has, texting incites profound cultural unrest. Literally. Recent studies have found that many participants reacted like addicts when separated from their cellphones, while other studies have found that the "sleeping disorders" some high schoolers experience result from cuddling up with text messages all night."

"Teens are cooling on Facebook, a trend suggested by recent research and acknowledged, this week by Facebook itself. The shift was confirmed time and time again in e-mail and phone interviews with dozens of teens and their parents in CNN's reporting of this story. While the social-networking juggernaut continues to chug along among adults, boasting more than 1 billion active users, younger users are flocking to newer, and arguably hipper, networking tools."

The open learning innovation contest invites innovators whose work embodies the principles of connected learning to submit their stories and experiences for consideration. They might be running online or offline courses, activities, learning programs, study groups, or hybrid classes or out-of-school (extra-institutional) activities having to do with independent learning and volunteer work.

Reclaim Open Learning is an innovation contest, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Media and Learning Hub, and the MIT Media Lab, with a humble mission. We want to find the five best examples of innovation happening right now in higher ed. The best of truly open, online and networked learning + The knowledge and expertise represented by institutions of higher education = Reclaim Open Learning.

As a follow-up to "Come see me at EDUCAUSE," I wanted to share out some resources from my presentations as well as some resources that I gathered at the conference.