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For week four of the Open University course on Open Education, we were asked to compare MOOC models: either ds106 or the Change MOOC with something from Coursera or Udacity, focusing on "technology, pedagogy, and general approach and philosophy."

The recently announced partnership with the University of Edinburgh presented the team with an opportunity to engage and experiment with the much-publicised MOOC format, and foreground issues related to the theory and practice of online education itself. What follows are some of our perspectives on the planning and development of a large scale open course, what challenges the MOOC presents for delivering a worthwhile educational experience, and what questions this type of course format provokes for a team already teaching and researching in the field of e-learning and technology in higher education.

The following take on 21st century learning developed by TeachThought is notable here because of the absence of technology. There is very little about iPads, social media, 1:10 laptops, or other tech-implementation. In that way, it is closer to the "classic" approach to "good learning" than it is the full-on digital fare we often explore.

San Jose State has already achieved remarkable results with online materials from edX, a nonprofit online provider, in its circuits course, a longstanding hurdle for would-be engineers. Usually, two of every five students earn a grade below C and must retake the course or change career plans. So last spring, Ellen Junn, the provost, visited Anant Agarwal, an M.I.T. professor who taught a free online version of the circuits class, to ask whether San Jose State could become a living lab for his course, the first offering from edX, an online collaboration of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"I made a series of posters that I often hang around the room when I facilitate workshops. It's fun for participants to get up and scan them at break time. Each poster features a quote about education or technology. Part of the quote or its author is missing and has been replaced with a QR code."

"Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty - by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world's biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity."

In retrospect, 2012 may well be remembered as the year when Internet technology enabled the popularity of MOOCs-or massive open online courses-a form of disruptive or transformative education currently growing at a meteoric rate.

I opened my portion by emphasizing that the current IT-driven disruption is not actually about information technology but is, rather, about pedagogy. I'll take this opportunity to state my view again: the focus of this disruption should be on teaching and learning. However, I believe that there is value in having the IT organization take an active role in helping the institution to embrace this change, even going so far as to move onto "point" for change.

Just in time for Creative Commons' 10th birthday celebration of its license suite, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program - Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA) - that will help adult English language learners improve their language skills while simultaneously providing career and college readiness training through technology-based tools and resources.

They don't see privacy as simply keeping secrets. They understand privacy as controlling information flow. It is rare these days to be able to hide information from absolutely everyone. There are too many technologies that capture images and information. Instead, people control who sees their information. They set their social media profiles to allow certain people to have access but others not to have access. They allow some companies to have their data but do not want others to access it or want it used in some ways but not others. Privacy isn't all-or-nothing - it's about modulating boundaries and controlling data.

Mobile Commons is the technology behind today's most effective mobile messaging campaigns. We empower brands to increase sales and consumer engagement, and enable organizations to achieve unprecedented results in fundraising, social action and behavior change.

"The technological tools for transforming existing works have not only multiplied and increased in complexity, but they have also been effectively democratized because of their often significantly reduced cost and near-ubiquitous networked availability. Publishers and editors may no longer stand as primary gatekeepers to most creative works; increasingly, works are assessed in the public sphere through online databases like YouTube, and creators are making more works than ever before. Many such works rely heavily on the public domain, fair use, and the rich cultural soil of previous works for their efficacy and quality."

Today is Banned Website Awareness Day, and all across the country, educators are doing their part to raise awareness of how overly restrictive blocking of educational websites affects student learning. The dialogue around filtering must also include bring-your-own-device policies, appropriate use of social media in schools, and overall responsible use of technology in school.

Jonathan is also the director of the BadgeStack Project, the first system designed for badge-empowered learning and community-building, and the first to issue Mozilla Open Badges. We'll talk about the changing nature of professional development (PD) in particular and learning in general with the rise of online meeting technology, and how informal and non-traditional learning environments are impacting how we think about education.

"The Delaware Department of Education (DDE) recently joined a national movement to use high-quality, openly licensed educational resources in schools. In support of the #GoOpen campaign, launched by the United States Department of Education's Office of Education Technology, Delaware will build a statewide repository of open educational resources (OER). "

"Why do practitioners in higher education, student affairs, and students services always go to the "tool" question first? Why do we want to know what's "hot" with the digital, social technologies?"

" humans are more important than technology, but inspiring faculty should be our goal. Our organizational cultures need to embrace online learning as unique. We need to be supporting faculty by immersing them in engaging, meaningful online classes as part of their preparation to becoming great online instructors. When our organizational practices convey a hierarchy between face-to-face and online classes, that hierarchy will translate into the attitudes of the instructors who teach those classes."