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From Inside Higher Ed

 Why Pay for Intro Textbooks?  Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market. OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/07/rice-university-announces-open-source-textbooks#.TzEak8wIs8w.twitter#ixzz1lhdj0EqN
Inside Higher Ed

How do we teach students the merits of personal learning networks?

I decided that this very quick guide, developed by thinking aloud with my Twitter PLN, counts as useful info on augmented collective intelligence. A personal learning network IS a tool for augmented collective intelligence. — Howard 

From Campus Technology:

 NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition, researchers and analysts identified six technologies that have the potential to break down linguistic and cultural barriers, make education more affordable and efficient, open up new modes of learning, improve students’ chances of success and satisfaction in school, and connect us with the everyday objects in our lives.

From the National Review – a grim forecast:

 many universities may bankrupt themselves by clinging to an educational approach that confuses lecturing with learning and protects highly paid, tenured faculties and administrators from a tsunami of technological change that soon will deliver transformational learning at a fraction of today’s costs.

From the Chronicle:

The problem is, the current financing mechanism for college is far from a free market. Government subsidies account for close to 90 percent of revenues at some colleges when you add up grants, loans, and research funds. Also, nonprofit colleges are exempt from paying many taxes, and they receive tax-exempt gifts from donors.

“In the absence of a government subsidy, most colleges could not fill up their seats,” argues Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a higher-education economist and professor at Cornell University. “It’s silly to think that this is a free market.”

Lots of discussion can be found regarding the mission of postsecondary schools to train students to process information.  This quote, found in an AP story on the announcement of a guided bullet, paints a surreal picture of what our students will be doing – on the field of battle and in corporate realms:

Firestone and other experts said the battlefield of the future will surely include more capabilities for guiding bullets and bombs, but what will make the difference will be communication improvements and intelligence sharing systems that take advantage of the high-tech weapons while linking each soldier together.

Defense department researchers and contractors are already developing flying nano-bots that can stream live video, contact lenses that would allow soldiers to focus simultaneously on virtual digital images and their surroundings, and smartphone apps that help with tactical operations.

“Where we’re going is to a world where the individual soldier, Marine, sailor or airman lives in a bath of knowledge. The world would be surreal in the original sense of super real. When you look at something, you see what you need to see when you need to see it,” Firestone said. “They will have the ability to make decisions more accurately and that will have a significant impact.”

A Step Forward? Bertelsmann & Others Back $100 Million Venture Fund For Innovative Education

Advancing the Open Front

Interesting thoughts — civic engagement taught in composition/rhetoric via blog posts

Distraction is our friend

Pithy paths to collaboration using twitter —

Chatters determine the topic to be discussed each week by voting in an online poll. They mark their tweets with the hashtag #edchat, making it easy for anyone to search for the conversation, read in and contribute.

And beyond twitter — storify

Just as Storify was created by going beyond Twitter, it encourages users to go beyond journalism, pulling from a diversity of sources, rather than using a single medium, such as a blog post, print story or a video. And, Herman says, this is just the beginning

Gizmodo : You can’t afford Apple’s Education Revolution

while iBooks are very affordable textbooks, the iPad makes for one insanely expensive backpack

What all this adds up to is a education revolution for the landed gentry. Or even worse, schools that can’t afford it chasing a wave that’s years away from cresting. Millions of dollars spent on a supplementary learning tool. A distant horizon mistaken for the here and now.

WP : AT&T increases data plans for tablets, smartphones

If you think iPads will give k12 students at chance at interactive, remote learning — look at the cost

With the largest $50 tablet plan, you can watch about three and a half hours of YouTube videos in a month.

And, the cost will continue rise —

“Customers are using more data than ever before,” said David Christopher, AT&T’s chief marketing officer in a news release. “Our new plans are driven by this increasing demand in a highly competitive environment.”

And, if AT&T has its way with state law, it will be near impossible for local governments to create wifi environments to lower that cost.  For example, look at what the Wisconsin legislation does to the university system’s internetwork (WiscNet and PeachNet are very similar).

The legislation would also prohibit UW System campuses from supporting WiscNet, a cooperative that brings high-speed Internet to most schools and libraries across the state. Campus leaders say they fear the change could cripple the network. […] But Republican lawmakers say the university should not be in the business of providing telecommunications services.

From John Naughton’s top 10 books about the internet

So, in the end, I asked myself the question: what would you really need to know in order to understand the significance of the internet?  The answer is that you need to understand a smallish number of Big Ideas.  But how many? Then I remembered a famous paper published by the psychologist George Miller which argued that on average people can hold seven discrete ideas (plus or minus two) in short-term memory.  This led to the idea of a book with nine chapters – the nine things you really need to know about the net. If you’re interested, it’s a good idea to read the following 10 books as well.”

Interesting — add these to the reading list…

1. The Internet Galaxy by Manuel Castells
2. The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler
3. The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain
4. Transmission by Hari Kunzru
5. Reamde by Neal Stephenson
6. You are not a gadget by Jaron Lanier
7. Republic.com by Cass Sunstein
8. The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov
9. Darwin Among the Machines: the evolution of global intelligence by George Dyson
10. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig

A North Canton Ohio High School encourages students “Bring their own devices”

The plan, according to the U.S. Department of Education website, “calls for applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement.”

Fayette County Schools (Ga) experiment letting kids use smartphones to study

Comments from readers include:

There are schools that hopefully will share their success and failure at using the ‘new’ technology.

If my student’s cell phone is lost or stolen, is the BOE going to replace it?

LIVE FROM APPLE’S EDUCATION EVENT IN NYC

• 10:38 am “They’re extremely heavy. Students will just quit bringing them to class.”
• 10:38 am “With US history, they print a book and it’s outdated as soon as it comes out.”

Apple unveiled today iBooks 2, a “new textbook experience” for the iPad and the company’s attempt to bury traditional schoolbooks.

 Isaacson noted that Jobs had “set his sights on textbooks,” seeing the $8 billion a year business as something that was “ripe for destruction.”

Lots of criticism is found about whether the data supports regulations phasing out incandescent light bulbs in favor of CFL’s.  Some conservative state legislators have offered resolutions attacking the claims.

Elearning is capturing the imaginations of many of the same legislatures as a means of controlling the costs of education – both k12 and postsecondary.  This NYT article notes the lack of evidence to support any claims that elearning is a replacement for traditional learning technologies.

 “there are no longitudinal, randomized trials linking eLearning to positive learning outcomes.”  Intel document

Yet, the corporations who own the Elearning technology companies are paying for legislators to hear about the wonders of e-learning.  Virtual charter schools are competing for tax dollars to replace the brick and mortar schools.  Why are we not asking — does this work?