BREATHE MY (DATA) EXHAUST: Here was the literal money quote from the glowing NYTImes story about "startup whisperer" Reid Hoffman: the next tectonic shift for industry "...will be driven by data. Mr. Hoffman has been investing in companies that are data-driven or starting to work with data in interesting ways." Knewton surely agrees. Another possibly interesting data source: the Learning Registry, which made its public debut this week, announced by Arne Duncan. It's the government's effort to make translucent the pipes through which digital (educational) content flows. Or put another way: the Registry aims to share "paradata," data that describes how some digital content is being used. (Tim O'Reilly poetically calls it "data exhaust.") Almost 20 organizations, including the Library of Congress and the National Science Digital Library, have signed up to contribute their content to the brew. (The more stuff included, the more valuable the results.) Those who use the Registry will be able to, for instance, see what chunks are used the most by teachers. Also shared: data on what material is aligned with curriculum standards.
