April 25, 2012
Mobile Learning: A Quick Start Guide
Amit Garg and Abhijit Kadle ,
Upside Learning, April 25, 2012.
Upside Learning has released an eBook titled 'Mobile Learning: A Quick Start Guide'. From the description: "This quick start guide is meant for training departments still unsure about when to use, how to design, develop and implement mLearning in a way that works for their organizations." The book is OK, but really superficial, and you'll be forced to fill out a form with your email (I recommend filling out the form with a short poem about spam instead of your name and phone number, like I did). Via Helge Scherlund. The E-Learning Guild also has a book you have to fill out a 'please spam me' form to get, but I didn't bother with that one.
Have You Got Your Free Google Drive, Skydrive & Dropbox Accounts?
Brian Kelly,
UK Web Focus, April 25, 2012.
Let's see. I have a Google Drive, which offers 5 gigs free and 25 gig for $2.50 a month. There are numerous bases for comparison, but I notice most of the article miss what is most salient to me: speed. I gave up on MobileMe because it was slooooooow, way too slow to use to sync my stuff. The other big concern is the temrs of use, which gets the treatment in this post by Brian Kelly - inevitably someone says "Google owns everything on google drive" which of course is nowhere near true as "the rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones." But will your Google Drive contents begin influencing your search results? You have to begin to think so...
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Apple Inc., Operating Systems, Google]
New TED-Ed Site Turns YouTube Videos Into ‘Flipped’ Lessons
Nick DeSantis,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012.
I'm not sure why the Chronicle couldn't link to the new TED-Ed site is describes in this article - the Forbes article manages to link to it, The Atlantic has no problem, nor does Mashable, nor any of the other half dozen sites I saw covering the release (surely a testament to the pull TED has in the traditional publishing community). "The new Web site, unveiled today, lets professors turn TED’s educational videos—as well as any video on YouTube—into interactive lessons inspired by the 'flipped' classroom model."
[Link] [Comment][Tags: YouTube, Books, Video, Push versus Pull, Online Learning, Paradigm Shift]
Coursera, the Other Stanford MOOC Startup, Officially Launches with More Poetry Classes, Fewer Robo-Graders
Audrey Watters,
Hack Education, April 25, 2012.
I'm running this item just for the headline, which is the most fun headline I've seen this year. But there's also some indication that even the Coursera's Daphne Koller is seeing beyond content and testing: “There’s a growing amount of content out there on the Web,” says Koller, “and so the value proposition for the university is no longer simply getting their content out there. Rather, it’s fostering that personal interaction between faculty and students and students and students.” Promoting this interaction, of course, has been the object of the connectivist MOOCs, and so the Stanford model drifts ever closer to our own, as they gain experience. Here's the Chronicle coverage, which of course does not link to Coursera, the site it's talking about.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Interaction, Experience, Tests and Testing]
Is Academic Publishing Finally At A Crossroads?
Alan Wexelblat,
Copyfight, April 25, 2012.
The capitulation of AUCC to Access Copuyright notwithstanding (and being fought in some circles) the end of the gravy train for academic publishers may be in sight. Harvard - Harvard! - recently wrote that it cannot afford to continue paying for journals that may cost as much as $40,000 per year. The Harvard memorandum points out its annual cost for journals now approaches $3.75M. The researcher boycott of Elsevier continues, reaching more than 10,000 signatures. Academic publishing doesn't add up, submits the Observer.
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