"Higher education institutions face a number of opportunities and challenges as the result of the digital revolution. The institutions perform a number of scholarship functions which can be affected by new technologies, and the desire is to retain these functions where appropriate, whilst the form they take may change. Much of the reaction to technological change comes from those with a vested interest in either wholesale change or maintaining the status quo. Taking the resilience metaphor from ecology, the authors propose a framework for analysing an institution's ability to adapt to digital challenges. This framework is examined at two institutions (the UK Open University and Canada's Athabasca University) using two current digital challenges, namely Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Access publishing."
"Google revealed Wednesday that it always requires a search warrant whenever authorities seek access to the content of a user's emails or documents stored in Google's cloud, Wired reported."
"Learning Space as Creation Space
The next generation of learning spaces will take all the characteristics of an active learning environment-flexibility, collaboration, team-based, project-based-and add the capability of creating and making. Project teams will be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and will likely need access to a broad array of technologies. High-speed networks, video-based collaboration, high-resolution visualization, and 3-D printing are but a few of the digital tools that will find their way into the learning space.
The ability to rearrange furniture and technology quickly and easily will be highly desirable. Some project activities will need nothing more than comfortable furniture, food, and caffeine. Others will require sophisticated computational analysis and the ability to do rapid prototyping.
Acoustics will be a concern and will need to accommodate a wide range of activities. It seems likely that such space will support more than one team or activity simultaneously. That will be a highly desirable trait, fostering serendipitous discovery and innovation.
The ability to quickly and easily capture the group's activities and progress will also be desirable. An emerging class of powerful and effective collaboration tools enables project teams to save and store project elements, resources, concepts, plans, designs, models, and renderings-in short, all the "stuff" that a team might find or make."
Harvard Library cannot afford to subscribe to scholarly journals which have increased in cost to $3.75m, They recommend staff use open access journals.
Article from John Egenes at Otago Uni on remix culture.
"The internet and our digital convergence are
rapidly transforming long-held views
regarding the traditional relationship
between performer and audience ("creator" /
"consumer"). This change is giving a new
voice to the audience, literally bringing them
into the mix. With unprecedented access to
the creative process, and with an audience for
their creations, consumers of music are also
its producers, and are reshaping concepts of
creativity, individuality, and intellectual
property. This paper examines fundamental
shifts in the way the "Folk Process" works
within this context. Remix culture, once a
bastion of beat-driven dance mashups, is
expanding to include all styles of music, film,
theatre and art. I will argue that its long-term
significance lies in the notion that it blurs
lines between the traditionally separate roles
of creator and consumer, and challenges
long-held concepts of intellectual property
and copyright. Over the protests of many
traditional folk musicians and devotees, folk
music is entering this new digital arena,
where the Folk Process is changing from
gradual to immediate, from slow to rapid,
adapting to fit the new digital paradigm."