Research challenges in informal social networked language learning communities
Katerina Zourou, Open Education Europa, October 15, 2013

The current issue of Open Education Europa has one article discussing on,line learning. In this paper, Katerina Zourou looks at the tension between the need of researchers to access language learning data from social networking sites, and the barriers to that access. PDF. 

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Google’s New Terms Mean You Could Soon Be Acting as a Product Endorser
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, October 15, 2013

Tony Hirst describes a new Google setting that has your name show up as endorsements for products and services. Here is the link to turn it off - it's on by default, but I've turned it off in my own account (and have moved a step closer to deleting my Google account entirely). I've see other people's endorsements in search results - I don't think these can be turned off, except by unfriending everyone. Hirst looks at a few more of Google's recent innovations, "a little something that invisibly enmeshes me a little deeper in the Google knowledge web."

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Digital Literacy is a crock
Dean Groom, Playable ~ The Weblog of Dean Groom, October 15, 2013

Well we can't accuse Dean Groom of settling for half measures. "Digital literacy is a terrible term. It is misleading and submissive. it is manipulative and has significant economic overtones for everyone." The argument is essentially that 'digital literacy' is a mechanism used by the proprietors of "low value" digital media, such as weblogs, social media, e-zines, and the like, to get the approval of "high value" media like magazines and journals. So it is an interpretation of digital mediaa in the light of the (mostly text-based) values of traditioonal media. But as an account of 'literacy' it isn't particular valuable, concludes Groom. I'm largely sympathetic with this point of view. I've not advanced a version of digital literacy myself, instead opting to define literacy more generally, as 'critical literacies', probably more consistently with media theory itself. 

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Wordmap
Matthias Melcher, x28's new Blog, October 15, 2013

What is a 'concept'? As Wittgenstein says, "Concept is a vague concept." Responding to a question from Matthias Melcher I've initiated a bit of a discussion about “concepts” on my blog. This post take the point that "in English, “concept” is much more abstract than I thought," and results in a word map of the word 'concept'.

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Starting data analysis/wrangling with R: Things I wish I'd been told
Stian Haklev, Random Stuff that Matters, October 15, 2013

If you haven't heard of R as a data professional you soon will. Stian Haklev writes, "R is a very powerful open source environment for data analysis, statistics and graphing, with thousands of packages available." This post is a great starting point. Haklev writes, "I have been working quite intensively with R for the last half year, and thought I'd try to document and share a few tricks, and things I wish I'd have known when I started out."

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Europe’s iversity Launches 1st MOOCs With 100k+ Students & Curriculum Of 24 Courses
Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch, October 15, 2013

The headline says it all. Germany's iversity launched it's first set of courses today; you can find the English descriptions on its website. I've added iversity to the MOOC.ca list of providers (which is getting quite large). iversity's starting courses include (as quoted from TechCrunch):

• The Future of Storytelling by the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) Potsdam — with more than 27,000 enrollments
• Design 101 (or Design Basics), offered by the Academia de Belle Arti in Catania, has 17,000 enrolled students
• Public Privacy: Cyber Security and Human Rights by the Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance in Berlin — with 16,000 students enrolled

Of course, the subscription numbers are more reflective of marketing than value; the truer test will be over time to see how well it can sustain the momentum.

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