Multilitteratus Incognitus

In a few days I will be leaving on vacation, so I won't be MOOCing...or at least I won't be MOOing.  I have downloaded textual materials on my iPad, and I plan on getting a local SIM where I go to keep up with my RSS feeds (until Google Reader decides to kick the bucket).  I thought it would be a good idea to write a few thoughts while I have a hardware keyboard in hand. First up, edX and the Ancient Greek Hero course that I have been following. In a previous post I had mentioned that I had fallen behind with reading of the Iliad Scrolls (the side materials for the course) and I was only keeping up with the main textbook, the Ancient Greek Hero in 24 hours. Week 6 and 7 were actually quite long, compared to previous weeks, in terms of reading, so I have fallen behind on that one too. It is on my iPad, so I will be completing it during my vacation.  That said I did have a lightbulb moment when I was thinking of academic rigor for MOOCs and how xMOOCs are replicating exi...

File this under random thoughts... So, we've been talking about textbooks in my linguistics classes for the last couple of semesters and how most of them suck when it comes to language learning. My classmates who do teach languages for their day jobs constantly find creative ways of working through the deficiencies of the texts that they are saddled with. On the other side of the fence, in instructional design, we do talk about materials selection, and if there is material that will fit your needs, appropriate it, otherwise make your own (if time and money are not an issue). I happened to read a blog post recently with language learning resources on the web and I was reminded again of wikibooks. This lead me down the path of open source textbooks such as wikibooks and Flat World . The big question here is why don't we do it? Why don't we subject matter experts get together and create language textbooks that don't suck? Get some linguists, some language experts and...