By Eric Jou and Wang Wei, Asia One

Ever dreamed of attending a top-notch university such as Harvard, Yale or MIT? Well now is your chance to sit in on lectures from some of the most esteemed universities in the world, as they start offering free online access. Many prestigious Western universities have been offering free lectures for the masses through the Internet since 2002 as part of the Open Courseware initiative funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. These videos include lectures from renowned US institutions such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University.

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20100721-228109.html

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By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

This year, more than 1,000 at-risk students in Chicago graduated on time by taking online classes. While students drop out because of socioeconomic and academic reasons, they also drop out because of some bureaucratic reasons, said Robin Gonzales, manager of distance learning for Chicago Public Schools.

http://www.convergemag.com/college-career/Online-Classes-Help-Potential-Dropouts-Graduate.html

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by Stefanni Nolte, SC Now

Alice Peterson, said she knew her daughter was headed down the wrong path. “I might have been in jail and she might have been in the funeral home somewhere,” Peterson said. Instead, the cousins heard about Provost Academy, a free public online high school for South Carolina residents. They meet at Refuge Outreach Ministry in Lake City to take their lessons. “It’s all around the kids’ needs and maybe schools should have been doing that for a long time,” Provost Academy Executive Director Darrell Johnson said. “Our school is very student-centered. It’s all about the kids and success. We don’t allow them to fail, either.” Students spend an average of six hours a day working on their classes.

http://www2.scnow.com/scp/news/local/pee_dee/article/online_high_school_turns_two_lake_city_students_lives_around/228983/

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by Leena Rao, TechCrunch

Grockit is an online learning community that adds game mechanics to helping high school students prepare for standardized tests such as the GMAT and SAT. The startup, which just raised $7 million in funding, is also moving into general online education for high school and middle school students with impending launch of the Grockit Academy, an online destination where students can learn together and teach each other.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/grockit-makes-youtube-edu-more-useful/

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By Stanford University School of Medicine, Health News Digest

The setting is clearly a simulated operating room, with a robotic mannequin as the patient, but the resident’s anxiety feels all too real. And the scary soundtrack — imagine the ominous music played when the shark approaches in Jaws — only adds to the tension. This is not just entertainment, it’s also educational. This video is part of START, a new 10-month online course from the Stanford University School of Medicine, filled with lectures, video-podcasts, interactive group projects, virtual classrooms and virtual mentoring. The name stands for Successful Transition to Anesthesia Residency Training, and is the brainchild of Larry Chu, MD, assistant professor of anesthesia, and Kyle Harrison, MD, clinical assistant professor of anesthesia. The course was designed to help relieve some of the anxiety that often accompanies the start of the residency.

http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Education_390/New_Online_Learning_Approach_Prepares_Doctors_for_Stanford_Residencies.shtml

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by Jennifer Aaker, Andy Smith, Good.is

Stanford Graduate School of Business offers a class called the Power of Social Technology, the goal of which is to arm entrepreneurial business students with online social media tools that create social good. The class has also spurred research on the “ripple effect”—the idea that small acts of goodness can create big change—and has welcomed speakers from Pixar, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Groupon, and Google to talk about how students can harness social good in a way that goes hand-in-hand with profit-making.

http://www.good.is/post/how-do-you-teach-social-good/

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If you want to sell your magazine through iPad, you have to sell it through Apple (which will take 30 percent). The company will not allow you to sell subscriptions on your own website. Ryan Chittum writes, "Apple justifies its controlling instincts by saying the iPad (and iPhone) are a 'curated platform.' But that has little to do with letting non-pornographic magazines sell subscriptions. Apple's behavior is setting it up for some serious antitrust scrutiny down the line. It will be well deserved. Meantime, the media had better get hold of this tiger before it gets hold of them." Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review, July 28, 2010 [Tags: Apple Inc., Subscription Services] [Link] [Comment]

Larry Ferlazzo introduces us to Drag On Video, which lets us splice YouTube videos in a web page and display them as a single unit. Warning! This will eat time if you let it! Still, I can't get over how fun this is to play with. Larry Ferlazzo, Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…, July 28, 2010 [Tags: Video, YouTube] [Link] [Comment]

I still think there's something odd about the way websites have become 'apps' in Apple's world. But that said, here is a list of "top 10" education apps for the iPad. The list sounds remarkably like a list of websites: Evernote, MobileRSS, Pulse, FreeBooks, Kindle, Dragon Dictation, Seesmic or TweetDeck, iWiki, Delicious, YouTube and iTunes. I was thinking today about how really Apple is trying to replace the web with its own version, iOS, rendered as apps. Maybe Android is trying to be that too. On the other hand, my Palm uses WebOS based on Webkit. And it seems to me that we don't have to replace HTML, Javascript, CSS and the rest to have mobile platforms. Jeff Cobb, Mission to Learn, July 28, 2010 [Tags: Apple Inc., Video, RSS, Wikipedia, YouTube] [Link] [Comment]

Shades of Rocketboom, it's e-Learning Today TV! I'm not sure how long they've been broadcasting, but this 9-minute video - and handy links page that is attached - is basically a talking heads newscast, but it's nice and light and will be of interest especially to people in the K-12 sector. I think I've got the right website (the videos are mirrored all over the place). There doesn't appear to be a feed specifically for e-Learning Today TV, though. Denis Soukhanov, Learning Today, July 28, 2010 [Tags: Video] [Link] [Comment]

Skillsoft surveyed workers in medium and large European companies asking how they like to learn. "They like freedom and flexibilty yes – but also ... they want learning on demand, when it's needed. They can then carry out what they have learnt straight away – with the ability to go back over something again if they haven't quite comprehended the first time." The sense I get reading this is that there is a fair support for classroom learning, but also that people would really like to have the materials later at their fingertips when they need them, whether or not they attended the classroom learning. Via email from Donald H. Taylor, Learning and Skills Group. Various Authors, Skillsoft, July 28, 2010 [Tags: European Union] [Link] [Comment]

By Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education

As more colleges dip their toes into the booming online learning business, they’re increasingly taking those steps hand-in-hand with companies like Embanet. For nonprofit universities trying to compete in an online market aggressively targeted by for-profit colleges, the partnerships can rapidly bring in many students and millions of dollars in new revenue. That’s becoming irresistible to an increasingly prominent set of clients. George Washington University, Boston University, and the University of Southern California, to pick just three, all work with online-service companies. But the new breed of online collaboration can tread into delicate academic territory, blurring the lines between college and corporation.

http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Ed-Colleges-Hire/66309/

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by Daniel B. Wood, Christian Science Monitor

A pilot program of 25 to 40 courses this fall would offer the university’s most crowded courses, including calculus, chemistry, physics, and freshman composition. Making it work will require $6 million in private donations, and it comes at a challenging time for higher education in California. It was just a year ago that students took over campus buildings and blocked parking lots in high-profile demonstrations, protesting a 32 percent increase in student fees.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0716/University-of-California-considers-online-bachelor-s-degree

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By JEANNIE KEVER, Houston Chronicle

A board advisory committee later this month will recommend ways to cut costs in higher education, and requiring everyone who attends a public college or university in Texas to take some classes online could be up for discussion. Whether online education saves money is up for debate, since schools have to invest in technology and support services in order to deliver it. The most obvious savings comes from not having to provide additional classroom space. Campuses need fewer parking spaces, campus police and other auxiliary services, too. Tuition is generally the same, although some schools charge an additional technology fee.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7112203.html

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I don't know whether to be outraged or just gaga with bemusement at the Chronicle of Higher Education's latest folly. The article in question is titled "YouTube Better at Funny Cat Videos Than Educational Content, Professors Say." There is, in fact, no reference to cat videos anywhere in the article, nor possibly in the researchers' work (I've written them and asked, but haven't received a reply back). Rather, what we have is a short article telling us that "while many students turn to YouTube when looking for help with their homework, it can be hard to find good-quality educational clips there." This, of course, is outrageously false. And badly argued. As Alan Levine summarizes, "Two experts in biology looked at web videos for keywords in their discipline, and they found it wanting. Therefore, the only thing YouTube is Funny Cat Videos." Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, July 27, 2010 [Tags: Video, Research, Quality, YouTube] [Link] [Comment]

Oh, I think this point in defense of lectures is exactly right. "If you recognize that the complete sentence is 'Lectures don't work…for inexperienced or lazy learners,' then you realize that using 'active learning' with professionals at a formal conference is insulting to your audience. You are assuming that they can't learn on their own, without your scaffolding." Now, sometimes they can't actually learn, even if they are professionals - if they are learning outside their domain of expertise, for example. But people who are interested and motivated and able to learn on their own need little help - they'll turn a lecture into active learning in their own way, through note-taking, engaging with the speaker, or simply listening with an active, questioning mind. Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, July 27, 2010 [Tags: Online Learning, Experience] [Link] [Comment]

Very nice talk from David Gauntlett titled "Making is Connecting." The thrust of this 9 minute video is that new media supports creativity, and this creativity creates happiness through meaningful work and ties with community. Tim Kastelle relates this to his own work (and unknowingly, to mine): "we connect ideas to people. This is the outbound side of Connection. I write about the idea connections that I make in my blog – as people read it, they start connecting with the ideas. I give as many public talks as I can..." Tim Kastelle, Innovation Leadership Network, July 27, 2010 [Tags: Video, New Media, Web Logs] [Link] [Comment]

Tony Bates reports, "Recently the Open University of Hong Kong launched its free digital platform called ‘Open Learning ‘." From the description: "Open Learning gathers together a wealth of audio-visual educational materials and courseware unit covering a broad range of subject areas…There are TV programmes produced by the University's Educational Technology and Publishing Unit, and recording of talks and conferences….The platform leverages on rapidly developing social network technology to engage with learning communities. It incorporates tools for creating personalised pages and a learning log where individuals can track their learning experience." Note that the Open Learning page has a musical soundtrack, which might be inconvenient if you're recording something while browsing. Tony Bates, Weblog, July 27, 2010 [Tags: Experience, China, Audio, Personalization, Video, Networks, Online Learning Communities, Learning Communities] [Link] [Comment]

Here's another contribution to the discussion around whether class blogs should be open. "It my opinion," argues Kathleen McGeady, "it is more harmful to "protect" students through a closed blog than it is to open their eyes to the real world of online technologies through open blogs. To me, having a closed blog feels like 'pretending to use technology' and the full benefits of blogging cannot experienced." Some good discussion in the comments follows her post. And it makes me want to question the whole idea of whether blogging in a closed environment is "safe". I wonder whether students who are bullied, privately and discretely, with the teacher's compliance, feel "safe" in such closed environments. Or whether they just feel there's no way out. Kathleen McGeady, Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom, July 27, 2010 [Tags: Experience, Web Logs] [Link] [Comment]