Learning Innovation

This week I led a discussion on academic/vendor relations with a product group at an edtech company. The meeting was in Canada. I never left my office in Hanover NH. We did the whole thing on a Web based collaboration platform.

Below is a screenshot of what I saw when I opened my Audible.com Library this morning. 0 results. No audiobooks. Nothing. Nada.

The text that you're reading now did not come from my fingers hitting the keyboard, rather me speaking to my MacBook Air.

If you haven't had a chance to read about Noodle's acquisition of the Lore, please go check out Doug Lederman's piece from 3/15. Before we get to our questions for Noodle's founder and chairman John Katzman , I think we should first congratulate Joseph Cohen and his partners and colleagues at Lore. We need more people like the Lore founders to start edtech businesses.

So I need a new backpack. The world's best backpack for anyone that works at the intersection of learning and technology. Do you have any recommendations?

Everyone in higher ed seems to believe in the power of innovation, while very few of us know how to change how we organize ourselves to move from ideas to execution.

We have become spoiled for choice in the world of online meeting platforms for synchronous teaching and webinars. We can choose between Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate, WebEX, GoToMeeting, Zoom, FuzeBox, BigBlueButton, Lync, Skype and I'm sure others (what am I missing?).

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are wonderful things. We should applaud MOOCS, participate in MOOCs, teach MOOCs, and encourage our institutions to participate in the MOOC movement. But what MOOCs may not do is lower the costs of higher ed. In fact, an argument could be made the the rise of the MOOCs will put new cost pressures on institutions, introducing new expenses over and beyond the direct cost of producing and delivering a MOOC. These additional costs incurred by the MOOC movement may show up in higher tuition prices.