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Social Media...people for sale

"We should be justifiably proud of the remarkable and enviable triumphs of American higher education. Instead, we find most recent conversations about higher education echoing around this one tiny (and so far trivial) aspect of the complex and diverse ecosystem of higher education. This focus on technological platforms at the expense of actual threats, challenges, and successes robs us of the ability to have sober, informed debates about the proper level and style of investment in higher education. So I suggest we let MOOCs grow and do their best work, learn from successes and mistakes, and stop assuming that they are the simple answer to anything meaningful and profound in the production and distribution of knowledge. The world is just not that simple."

"This course was really interesting but more like a PBS show. It consisted mainly of a series of interviews that Chuck Severance had done over the years, which he then strung together to make it into a history. While that is all true, it doesn't convey Dr. Severance' contribution to the whole. Clearly, his perspective was essential and his being present at the conversation at the actual points in history made his current insights more valuable."

"A new survey finds that about a third of middle-schoolers now use smart phones or tablets not just for entertainment and communication, but also for homework. Paired with young people's interest in science, math, and technology, it's another sign of the potential for digital learning that educators are slowly beginning to tap."

The mission of the Emerging Learning Design Conference is to showcase best practices in design and implementation by bringing together those interested in engaging in a vibrant and dynamic discourse regarding pedagogy and how technology can better enhance it.

"Under current law there is no recognized right to privacy in a student's or applicant's social networking site passwords and account information. This Bill makes it unlawful for a public or nonpublic academic institution to mandate that a student or applicant disclose password or account information granting the academic institution access to the student's or applicant's social networking profile or account. This Bill also prohibits academic institutions from requesting that a student or applicant log onto their respective social networking site to provide the academic institution direct access to the student's or applicant's social networking site profile or account. It is acknowledged by the General Assembly that new technological advances in internet use and social networking require new approaches to protecting reasonable expectations of privacy in personal information."

Pew Research Study on How Teachers are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classroom+

"You have probably heard a lot about wearables, living services, the Internet of Things, and smart materials by now. Designers are beginning to think about even weirder and wilder things, envisioning a future where evolved technology is embedded inside our digestive tracts, sense organs, blood vessels, and even our cells."

Last week marked the second time the Office of IT Academic Technology Services organized webinars focused on teaching professors about different resources they can use in their classroom as part of a week-long event called Open Education Week. Though eight events were held last week, Educational Technologist Mathieu Plourde said few professors participated.

"Leveraging the revolutionary potential of digital technology to provide access to the world's best faculty members, this new method of dissemination takes what were once exclusive, limited-access, high-priced resources and puts them online for anyone to learn from, freely. Despite its somewhat goofy acronym, this new model has been embraced, sometimes in the face of faculty objections, because of its democratizing, globalizing potential, as well as its effectiveness in improving an institution's reputation for innovation and excellence. I am, of course, talking about Coapi. If you haven't heard of it, the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, which now comprises more than 40, began in 2011 as a way for colleges to coordinate and advocate for open-access policies, which typically require that all faculty journal publications be made available freely online, whether on a personal Web site, institutional repository, or discipline-specific public archive."

The e-mail drill was one of numerous mind-training exercises in a unique class designed to raise students' awareness about how they use their digital tools. Colleges have experimented with short-term social-media blackouts in the past. But Ms. Hill's course, "Information and Contemplation," goes way further. Participants scrutinize their use of technology: how much time they spend with it, how it affects their emotions, how it fragments their attention. They watch videos of themselves multitasking and write guidelines for improving their habits. They also practice meditation-during class-to sharpen their attention.

"The success of San Jose State University's (SJSU) incorporation of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) into their curriculum is indisputable: in side-by-side comparisons of two traditionally-taught sections of an introductory electrical engineering course with an edX-provided MOOC variant, the pass rates went from 55-59 percent to 91 percent.[1] This mirrors results that the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University has been achieving for years. However, interestingly, SJSU incorporated MOOCs as a course supplement in a flipped classroom. If you think about that, it is the beginning of disaggregation of MOOCs into technological (big data), content and pedagogical (peer learning) components."

"More than six million students are currently enrolled in online courses. There are now massive open online courses (MOOCs), in which universities and technology companies partner to design courses for thousands of students. Selingo also discusses how two colleges, the traditional Southern New Hampshire University and the newly developed Western Governors University (see John Gravois, "The College For-profits Should Fear," Washington Monthly, September/October 2011), are experimenting with competency-based online associate's degree programs, in which students are credited as soon as they show mastery of a subject rather than having to spend a set number of hours in class."

"Often times, as the principal goes, so does the culture of the school.  This is not to say that individual teachers can not be leading the way within the school themselves, but this goes back to the notion of "pockets of innovation" as opposed to a "culture of innovation".  It is unlikely for an entire school to be "pushing the edge" if the principal or administrative team is not helping to pave the way for their community as they learn alongside of them."

organizations absorb changes logarithmically - the much slower rising red curve below it. It takes time for people to alter their thinking and their behavior.

While most of the headlines-including this one-reference MOOCs, the real issues are quite broad in scope, covering everything from whether higher education as we know it is on the verge of combusting, to big, bold experiments using technology to deliver education in transformative ways on a global scale. While the exact discussions seem to change on a constant basis, some of the current hot topics include proposed legislation in California, the swirl of possibilities around business models for so-called xMOOCs, and increased demand for production and availability of open textbooks.

"Held April 11-12, 2013, The Saylor Foundation's invitation-only Digital Education Conference (#DigEdCon) 2013 brought together a range of stakeholders in funding, philanthropy, technology, academia, and open education. These diverse friends of digital education convened over one of education's largest looming issues: how innovators must collaborate-and cooperate-to provide the highest quality education to all."