The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University recently announced they’re teaming up to offer free online courses. A handful of other prestigious universities and star professors are doing the same …

I joined the conversation at WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi show this week to talk about the future of online courses.

My latest College 2.0 column breaks the story of an emerging-media professor who built a Facebook app that lets people declare ‘enemies’ (meant loosely). The tale is getting picked up all over — from MSNBC to The Times of India.

PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by the world’s greatest professors can be found on YouTube.

Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?

This series explores the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate education.

The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled 12 of the top technology innovators in higher education. The goal is to highlight people doing the most exciting work around higher education and technology. Subjects represent many areas within academe (teaching, libraries, scholarship, online learning, etc.) and outside of it (companies and publishing). We spotlighted people who are thinking big about how technology can change education—and putting their ideas into practice. These are profiles, so the goal is to tell stories—what people are like, how they got to where they are, what impact they’ve made, why these issues matter to them.

Are classrooms prepared for e-textbooks? I’m briefly quoted in this public radio piece about student attitudes toward digital books.
I was also interviewed on this Marketplace mid-day extra about student reaction to the daylong Wikipedia outage.

The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market. The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market. (Full story at Chronicle of Higher Education | Picked up on Slashdot as well.)

Update: I wrote a news-analysis about the educational-badges trend for the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review.