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"Affordable content is a choice. It's a choice that many students have made in recent years as they've sought alternatives to higher-priced textbook and courseware products. But it is also a choice for faculty, and informing and persuading instructors to make this choice remains a major obstacle to ensuring that affordable content is adopted widely in Higher Education."

Twenty-first-century learners have expectations that are not met within the current model of higher education. With the introduction of online learning, the anytime/anywhere mantra taken up by many postsecondary institutions was a first step to meeting learner needs for flexibility; however, the choice and determination of delivery mode still resides with the institution and course instructors. Recently, the massive open online course (MOOC) movement has been introduced as an undeniable force in higher education, and the authors argue that it is distracting leadership from focusing on alternative options for supporting the needs of learners who demand both personalization and real access to learning opportunities. The key element to the MOOC movement is its openness that enables student access to education. In this article, the authors present the multi-access learning framework that envelops the MOOC phenomenon and merges course access modes enabling student choice and agency. The authors report results from a pilot study on one type of multi-access course, where students were able to choose their mode of access. In this case, remote students accessed the course via webcam and joined their on-campus classmates and instructor who were together face-to-face. Implications for multi-access learning in relation to the MOOC movement are discussed.

"In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse. (In other words, it won't impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don't. This is why small choices ("I'll take a burger and fries") don't make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term."

"Cognii VLA is a type of an intelligent tutoring system that engages learners in a real time, one to one coaching conversation, helping them revise their answers. Unlike other tutoring systems, Cognii VLA uses learners' own natural language, not their selections in multiple choice items, as the basis for assessment. Because open response questions are more accurate than multiple choice questions in assessing deep understanding and critical thinking, Cognii VLA can provide better coaching than earlier systems. "

"At this year's Educon I had the opportunity to collaborate with some wonderful librarians (Michelle Luhtala, Joyce Valenza, and Shannon Miller) and a fantastic student (Michael DeMattia) to share our experiences and have a conversation about teaching and learning in a no ban and no filter zone. The conversation is important because around the nation there are schools that are making the choice to do what is most convenient rather than what is right for kids. Rather than thinking outside the ban and empowering children to use the devices they own and access the internet they encounter outside of school, students are being banned and blocked. "

"If you don't have a resume, what do you have? How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects? Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch? Or a reputation that precedes you? Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up? Some say, "well, that's fine, but I don't have those." Yeah, that's my point. If you don't have those, why do you think you are  remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don't have those, you've been brainwashed into acting like you're sort of ordinary."

"A gamebook is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages."

When deciding what to filter, the IT department considers two questions: 1) Is there a relevant ­educational need for the site? and 2) Does the site potentially expose students to inappropriate material? "The toughest area to assess is social media," Vomastek continues. "Right now, we block Facebook and Twitter during the school day but ­allow users of our guest wireless network to access them during non-school hours. There's no one choice that will make everybody happy."

"Regardless of the goal of MOOCs - be it for profit or idealism - there are genuine educational concerns that need to be closely monitored. A course with 10,000 (or even 1,000) students enrolled cannot foster any significant discussion. Yes, teaching assistants (TAs) can be employed to groups of 100-200 students for online questions etc, but that may not be so simple. About 100 TAs would be needed for a modest-sized MOOC of 10,000 students. Even for the lecturer to organise 100 TAs would be a Herculean task. Another serious concern is evaluation. How can one evaluate 20,000 students taking a course? Yes, electronic quizzes and multiple-choice tests can be given to monitor progress - if the material is suitable for such types of questions. But what about material in the social sciences and humanities that might be harder to evaluate (than science) without essay-style answers? I've already seen that companies are attempting to write computer programs that will grade essays. But as one educator put it, how can a programmer include wit and style for evaluation in such a program?"

"Youth move between sites quickly. For example, Instagram is a current favorite among youth. Instagram is a photo-sharing site where users can post photos, "like" other people's photos and share them. Snapchat is also popular. This is a mobile service where users can take a photo, send it to someone else, and schedule it to delete within a few seconds. What is important to remember is that both are just services, and they share the same properties as many of their popular predecessors (such as MySpace, Facebook, and Chatroulette). There will always be new services that children move in and out of fluidly. Given the choice between trying to block children from a site and teaching them how to use it maturely, my hope is that parents do the latter. Especially as children are joining new services at increasingly young ages, how they use it becomes as important as what they use."

"MOOCs are characterized by their openness, enabling anyone across the world with an Internet connection to participate.  As a result, most MOOCs have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of participants. An online course with potentially tens of thousands of students is a very different teaching environment than face-to-face courses or even "traditional" online courses.  Teaching strategies practiced in other teaching contexts won't necessarily translate well to this context. Indeed, the sets of choices regarding learning objectives, content presentation, assessment, and instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction are still being developed in this emergent teaching environment."

I refuse to subject students to every ridiculous standardized test that the state and/or district thinks is important. I refuse to have my higher-level and deep thinking lessons disrupted by meaningless assessments (like the EXPLORE test) that do little more than increase stress among children and teachers, and attempt to guide young adolescents into narrow choices.

"Now let's imagine a university in the 21st century decides, as a matter of choice, to make all of its students attend classes in these sorts of learning spaces. But more than this, they decide to black out all of the windows so that no one can see in and they say that there can be no displays of student work within the room. They provide a standard overhead projector in each room and they insist that teaching consists of a 5 minute introductory presentation from the teacher followed by a question, followed by another 5 minute video and so on. Students are only allowed to talk to each other if they go to a corner of the room that has been walled off from everything else. This method of teaching will be the same for every degree program so the artists and sculptors will use a space like this as well as the engineers and physicists. Learning about modern dance and nursing will all occur in these spaces."

"I created the document below as a menu of choices between iPad apps and Web 2.0 applications that can be used to employ types of formative assessments. It is organized to encourage a balanced approach to formative assessment so that teachers can easily see the various options they might have to encourage Write, Do, and Say in the classroom."

Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Whether English is your first language or second language, Grammar Girl's punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Mignon Fogarty is the creator and host of Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.

I was recently asked, "Why are you giving the teachers choice of a laptop? Why not just go all in with one device?" My answer, simply stated, is that homogenization of any tool is never a good idea in a context that is intended to foster creativity.

"It felt to me that this year we've entered into a post-recession reality in how families are paying for college," said Sarah Ducich, senior vice president for public policy at Sallie Mae and an author of the study. "Even though college costs continue to increase, the amount that families are spending is holding steady, meaning they're making choices in a mostly cost-conscious construct."

Undergraduates are significantly more likely to major in a field if they have an inspiring and caring faculty member in their introduction to the field. And they are equally likely to write off a field based on a single negative experience with a professor.

The big takeaway here is pretty clear, in terms of the top two players: Android is on fire because of choice, availability and price point in emerging markets focused on shifting to smartphones from feature phones on limited budgets. That means it's even more crucial to watch what Apple debuts this fall in terms of a low-cost iPhone device, which is rumored to be based around the iPhone 5 and sport a plastic back that's cheaper to produce.