Covering organization, access, frequency, substance, archiving, and assessment

"MOOCs embody, rather than reflect, practices within the digital economy" and other premises. nice reflexive piece on designing, practicing, and convincing deans that MOOCs are worth trying

A close and thorough look at three or four ways of analyzing and grouping students. Opens up a general critique of the method and those who base their assumptions and actions on the results. Valuable for FYC.

""There's this expectation that your No. 1 job is to pander to this exotic alien consumer," says Mr. Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. "At that point, you cease being a teacher and you are simply selling yourself to an audience that might not be interested in buying.""

says Mr. Vaidhyanathan. "Generational thinking is just a benign form of bigotry, in which you flatten out diversity. This is debilitating to the job of trying to work with young people."

"Some folks are using this as a template and a cookbook," Mr. Bonner says of Millennials descriptions. "It makes it very difficult to see and understand variations because people who don't fit the recipe may be viewed as outliers. That anesthetizes nuances."

via http://jilltxt.net/. Brief labs incorporating wikis, blogs, et al in teaching.

A recent re-covering of mainstream ideas, but more than enough to get a fresh take on wikis.

Sunir Shah's project: " to collect and annotate resources of interest to the human-computer interaction, social-computing, participatory design and information systems design communities. Essentially people who are concerned about computers in a human context. "

Martin Weller's notes on epunk, the perpetual beta, and the long tail. Imagine how the pressure lifts from faculty and students when we think epunk.

Traci Gardner on uses of twitter in courses: "It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination:"

Mainly addressed to librarians, but good for wiki admins and teachers

shared lists: users socialize more around lists than photos, and use lists for selfrepresentation. video lecture by Werner Geyer.

Whenever there's a list involved, I take note.

Martin Weller. Students form social groups to study and learn, yet the typical IMS doesn't support this. Better, web 2.0 tools that let students form and work in social groups.

Ways for libraries and librarians - and by extension, students - to use twitter.

Imagine that you're sitting in a circle of friends, colleagues and perhaps some strangers ... Burke's conversation metaphor revisited. Good conceptual frame to start wiki work.

A superlative resource for Participatory stuff: weblogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking. Howard Rheingold

It would be nice if all students wrote essays in their spare time, but Pew tells us that only 8 percent do. Nearly all of them, however, use text and instant messaging, so if the far shore turns out to be a chat room, then we should start teaching critica

John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or