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"Two professors at the University of Texas at Austin have given birth to a new term, SMOC, which stands for "synchronous massive online class." How's it different? The Wall Street Journal describes it as "somewhere between a MOOC...a late night television show and a real-time research experiment," where "students, professors and teaching assistants [are required] to be online at the same time." Running what appears to be a live MOOC doesn't come cheap: the two professors admitted they needed 125 school employees to run the show. And that may be why they're hoping to charge non-UT students for their intro to psychology SMOC"

The Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier decision, passed in 1988, gives principals and advisors the right to prior restraint of the student press. The justices claimed that the student press was not a "public forum" for expression. Administrators argued that they need to make sure that the school environment is conducive to teaching and learning. They don't want stories that could disrupt the educational atmosphere of the school This was poor judgement on the part of the justices since the purpose of the student press is to encourage students to participate in the public forum.

"not all intelligence research is controversial: If you study cognitive development in toddlers, or the mental decline associated with Alzheimer's disease, "that's treated as just normal science," says Douglas Detterman, founding editor of Intelligence, a leading journal in the field. The trouble starts whenever the heritability of intelligence is discussed, or when intelligence is compared between genders, socioeconomic classes, or-most explosively-racial groupings."

"The taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world's largest funder of biomedical research. Researchers are not paid for the articles they write for scholarly journals, nor for the time and expertise they donate by peer-reviewing and serving on editorial boards. Yet the publishers claim copyright to the researchers' work and charge hefty fees for access to it. "

"The Internet, increasingly affordable computing, open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which a quality education can be a basic human right. Yet before we break the "iron triangle" of access, cost and quality with new models, we need to develop sustainable open business models with open policies: public access to publicly funded resources."

"Dealing with all the complaints takes time and, as a PhD student, I had my own research to do. Evaluations, ironically, were not really my concern. Student evaluations are not that important in economics (unless you aspire to teach at a liberal arts college), or not nearly as important as publishing papers in a top journal. And despite pleas from the thwarted Goldman candidate, the future job prospects of students and the money they might some day donate to the university was furthest from my mind. I'd sooner worry about winning a research grant."

"People who love making stuff are also critical consumers of the very same stuff they create. Authors read. Chefs eat. Painters go to galleries. Engineers pay attention to the physics of the world around them. Academics read journal articles. "

"Fortunately, a group of tireless researchers-who I've had the honor of collaborating with-has put a wooden stake through the dark heart of this demon. In the most recent addition of the scientific journal Educational Technology, Deepak Subramony, Michael Molenda, Anthony Betrus, and I (my contribution was small) produced four articles on the dangers of this misinformation and the genesis of it. After working separately over the years to debunk this bit of mythology, the four of us have come together in a joint effort to rally the troops-people like you, dedicated professionals who want to create the best outcomes for your learners."

"Like any good TA, Ms. Watson's involvement was low-key but helpful. "She was the person -well, the teaching assistant- who would remind us of due dates and post questions in the middle of the week to spark conversations," student Jennifer Gavin told the Journal. Some students envisioned their TA as a young PhD hopeful. Few, if any, realized Ms. Watson was actually a computer."

""Teachers who are skilled at improving students' math achievement may do so in ways that make students less happy or less engaged in class," writes University of Maryland's David Blazar in the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Education Finance and Policy."

Super resource!

The rationale for seeking open terms of both access and use is as follows. Free access provides the literature to at least five overlapping audiences: researchers who happen upon open-access research articles while browsing the Web rather than a password-protected database; researchers at institutions that cannot afford the subscription prices for the growing literature; researchers in disciplines other than that of a journal's intended audience, who would not otherwise subscribe; patients, their families, students, and other members of the public with an interest in the information but without the means to subscribe; and researchers' computers running text-mining software to analyze the literature. In addition, granting readers full reuse rights unleashes the full range of human creativity for translating, combining, analyzing, adapting, and preserving the scientific record, whereas traditional copyright arrangements in scientific publishing increasingly inhibit scholarly communication.

"Although not specifically designed to optimise learning, claims have been made that MOOCs are based on sound pedagogical foundations that are at the very least comparable with courses offered by universities in face-to-face mode. To validate this, we examined the literature for empirical evidence substantiating such claims. Although empirical evidence directly related to MOOCs was difficult to find, the evidence suggests that there is no reason to believe that MOOCs are any less effective a learning experience than their face-to-face counterparts. Indeed, in some aspects, they may actually improve learning outcomes."

"In the case of Breaking Tweets, it was a personal blog that I started for fun on Jan. 31, 2009. I had just witnessed the power of Twitter for news as mainstream media highlighted it covering the Hudson Plane Crash on Jan. 15, 2009 and many (including myself) live tweeted Barack Obama's Inauguration at the National Mall on Jan. 20, 2009."

"In the moments following the twin explosions at the Boston Marathon, many of the initial reports disseminated through social media proved to be false. Jeremy Stahl, social media editor for Slate.com, shares his rules for social media responsibly in the midst of tragic, breaking news."

"Like many, I found myself gripped by the real-time reports that poured in on the evening of April 19th. Boston Police were in close pursuit of the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect. Up to this point, I mostly followed the story via @CNN and CNNLive. I noticed however, that some of the most interesting updates were shared via Twitter directly by the Boston Police (@Boston_Police). As police surrounded the second suspect while he hid in a recreational boat in the backyard of a home in Watertown, I shifted from online to TV. Yes…my  phone was nearby and it was in fact my second screen. I tuned in to Anderson Cooper on CNN to witness the apprehension as it happened."

"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."

The conventional wisdom in education is that any school reform--be it curriculum, instruction, assessment, or teacher professionalism--is most likely to take hold in schools that have strong leadership. The same holds true for technology. Any educator will tell you the most successful implementation of technology programs takes place in schools where the principal sees him or herself as a technology leader.