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Education, and in particular higher education, has seen rapid change as learning institutions have had to adapt to the opportunities provided by the Internet to move more of their teaching online1 and to become more flexible in how they operate. It might be tempting to think that such a period of change would lead to a time of consolidation and agreement about approaches and models of operation that suit the 21st century. New technologies continue to appear,2 however, and the changes in attitude indicated by the integration of online activities and social approaches within our lives are accelerating rather than slowing down. How should institutions react to these changes? One part of the answer seems to be to embrace some of the philosophy of the Internet3 and reevaluate how to approach the relationship between those providing education and those seeking to learn. Routes to self-improvement that have no financial links between those providing resources and those using them are becoming more common,4 and the motivation for engaging with formal education as a way to gain recognition of learning is starting to seem less clear.5 What is becoming clear across all business sectors is that maintaining a closed approach leads to missing out on ways to connect with people and locks organizations into less innovative approaches.6 Higher education needs to prepare itself to exist in a more open future, either by accepting that current modes of operation will increasingly provide only one version of education or by embracing openness and the implications for change entailed. In this article we look at what happens when a more open approach to learning is adopted at an institutional level. There has been a gradual increase in universities opening up the content that they provide to their learners. Drawing on the model of open-source software, where explicit permission to freely use and modify code has developed a software industry that rivals commercial approaches, a proposed

Excellent article from Australia on why people pirate and why it's often the copyright owners (big business, not the creators) to blame.

Some good points from Jane Hart on social in the workplace.

Interesting - people learn in MOOCS and at least as well as face to face classes. The paper is published in IRRODL so will be worth looking at in detail.

How do we share our concepts of AI with people from other cultures?

Abstract Managerialism creates burdens for academics with no evidence for its benefit. Business imperatives override educational. There is needless competition between universities. Research imperatives override education. Global inequalities in educational need are ignored, universities have not kept up with the way young people gain information and initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of higher education are 'tinkering' rather than the required total re-thinking of higher education.

Interesting statistics on 2011 tablet sales in Aus/NZ: iPad 2 capturing 71% c.f. Android's 27% of NZ market. WiFi-only tablets dominating.

I wonder how much the wifi is driven by the cost difference for 3g? Also, how many only really use at home and then how many people are disappointed that they can't get wifi when they are out?

Looks quite neat. * Let your audience decide Get to know your audience by letting them decide which questions, suggestions or ideas interest them most. * Everyone's voice is heard The voting box at the top of page focuses attention on submissions recently added and on the rise, making it simple and easy to participate. * Be creative Include people in your preparation for lectures, interviews and hard decisions or work together to organize feature requests and brainstorm new ideas.

This resource is intended to distil lessons learned from various JISC innovation programmes into a "Good Practice Guide for Sustaining and Embedding Innovations". It is intended to support project steering groups and management teams in further and higher education in decision-making in this area and focuses on: Changing people and culture.Working with existing institutional structures to influence organisational change.Embedding or aligning with strategies, processes, systems, initiatives and services.Creating usable tools and resources (as part of project outputs) to meet stakeholder needs.Developing commercial and open approaches to sustaining and embedding innovation.

"'We found no evidence for any discontinuity in technology use around the age of 30 as would be predicted by the Net Generation and Digital Natives hypothesis,' says the report. What the reseachers do find interesting and worthy of further study is the correlation--which is independent of age--between attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work."

That last point is pretty powerful. Need to get the data replicated elsewhere as next stage. But as always, different people are different!

SM can alter collective action dynamics. Post euphoria post on SM & the Arab Spring

News article on the United Airlines broken guitar saga where the only recourse left to the musician was to pen a song about the debacle and post it on YouTube. United started talking after this!

This review of collaborative benchmarking in higher education is aimed at people who have a responsibility for evaluating institutional policies, practices and performance. It is intended to provide an overview of benchmarking as a tool for self-evaluation and self-improvement. The overview is published with permission of the journal Quality Assurance in Education 2001.

The video on the United Airlines broken guitar saga where the only recourse left to the musician was to pen a song about the debacle and post it on YouTube. United started talking after this!