In light of today's EdLab Development & Research meeting about NLT promotional ideas and our overall marketing efforts around our various projects, the video below presents research on the effectiveness of Twitter as a marketing tool.

Inspired by the New Yorker cartoonist, Carlita Johnson's own blog of rejected cartoons, I'd like to start posting from our collection of rejected Visualized pieces. Perhaps some learning can come of it...

REJECT SELECTION
Pitch date: Apr 1, 2013
Pitch title: Spring breakers today are choosing to learn
*Note the badges that the students are wearing in the bottom half... yeah. That's a group of students choosing to get un-verified credentialing instead of choosing to raise a glass. Pick your poison of regret...

Inspired by the following image, but ultimately FAILING... Oh but there was so much potential to ride on the waves of this awesome meme!

Here are NLT TC Twitter follower/following maps.

Click here for bigger figures Followers map Following map

Here are TC Record's Twitter followers and followees maps.

To access bigger images here follower map following map.

My very first memory of working at the EdLab is the Group Genius project with Kate, Daniel, and Allen... titled "Jazz and Jobs"... where I had the chance to share my appreciation for jazz. It ain't just me. The whole world loves jazz.

Today is the 2nd Annual International Jazz Day, and the celebration is held in Turkey this year... Why Turkey? Did you know that the founders of Atlantic Records, the huge jazz and gospel label, were the sons of Turkey's first ambassador to the US in the 1930's? Take this learning a step further and find out more about jazz and democracy in the EdLab curriculum's called "Let Freedom Swing".

We may be miles/kilometres away from Istanbul, but we ARE in NYC... jazz is everywhere...

The European Commission, in conjunction with the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), recently announced it would be creating Europe's first set of mooc offerings. These initial offerings would be handled by several open universities across all of Europe: Western Europe (e.g. France), Eastern Europe (e.g. Lithuania), the Mediterranean (e.g. Turkey) and Israel (technically in the Middle East but due to political reasons, has membership in many European organizations). The courses are offered on one single platform, OpenUpEd, and its free of charge though some courses and institutions require payment from interested students upon completion if they want a certificate.

While re-studying Reciprocal Recommenders, I found one of the references particularly fascinating. It’s an old paper in this stream of literature, College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage. It’s interesting to explain complex real-world problems (reciprocal recommender algorithms) to simple number pairings in math.

Admission Problem: A college is considering a set of n applicants and can only admit a quota of q.

But there are several uncertainties and rules to solving this assignment problem mathematically, i.e. (a) whether a given applicant has also applied elsewhere (b) how she/he ranks the colleges to which they have applied and (c) which of the other colleges will offer to admit him.

In admission ecosystem, we also introduce the waiting list mechanism, which results in introducing new problems. i.e. Suppose one is accepted by a college and placed on the waiting list of another that he prefers. Should he play safe by accepting the first or take a chance that the second will admit him later? Is it ethical to accept the first without informing the second and then withdraw his acceptance if the second later admits him? Therefore, this kind of math problem is unstable.

Audrey Waters thinks so.

I discovered the infographic from her Tweet, "I don't want to start my Monday off by debating MOOCs on Twitter, but golly this Chronicle viz is dumb. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Major-Players-in-the-MOOC/138817/ …"

Do you agree? Add your thoughts below! Also, what resources are missing? Overrepresented? Misrepresented? Here is the original Chronicle of Higher Ed article (in case you missed it above!).

Join me on May 29th from 6:30-9:00pm (after checking with Hui Soo, as the event costs $) for this exciting forum hosted by UClass (Leah just presented an EdLab Seminar - Check out both her & Zak's EdtechTakes below) and Asia Society focused on the international education. Here is the link to sign-up!

Panelists will include:

Wendy Kopp, Founder of Teach For America and Teach For All
Stephen Hodas, Executive Director of Innovate NYC Schools (NYC Dept. of Ed)
Chris Whittle, CEO of Avenues: The World School
Peter Gorman, Former Superintendent of Charlotte Schools and EVP of Education Services at Amplify
Kenneth Porter, Teacher at Community Voices Middle School and Active UClass User
Lucy Gray, Founder of the Global Education Conference Network
Zak Malamed, Student and Founder of Student Voice
Brandon Wiley, Director of International Studies Schools Network of the Asia Society
Zak Ringelstein, Founder and Director of UClass

I am watching the keynote speech webcast from this link. It just started 5 min ago and will end by 10 a.m.

Live blogging