Editor’s Note: Each week, we reflect on the top articles, blog posts, tweets, news, thoughts, and other tidbits we’ve found interesting or useful. Enjoy!

Ryan

I’m thoroughly intrigued by Hybrid Pedagogy’s MOOC MOOC: Critical Pedagogy, beginning on 2015-01-19. Unlike other Massive Open Online Courses, this one requires no registration and will take place via Twitter, Google Hangouts on Air, and wherever participants decide to use the #moocmooc tag. If you’ve been curious about bell hooks, Henry Giroux, or Paulo Freire, or if you’d like what promises to be a playful and thoughtful online book club on how & where teaching happens, you might also want to check it out.

Over at Library Journal, Barbara Fister has written an excellent roundup of some of the people and projects that inspired her throughout 2014. Ranging from the Ferguson Public Library to the ALA’s new Code of Conduct, her “Recognizing My Library Heroes of 2014” serves as a great highlight reel and reflection on some core values of librarianship.

Praise for the Parable of the Polygons took over my Twitter feed for a couple of days back in December—and it’s still a great model for using games and digital humanities to bring scholarly communication to the public at large. The authors use an interactive blog to model segregation in an inviting way, so it’s clear why this appeals to people interested in pedagogy, gamification, human interaction models, and/or society at large. Vi Hart and Nicky Case even made it public domain, with source code on GitHub. Scholarly communication hopefully will involve more posts like this in the future!

Becky

I just learned (thank you, Listservs) about Utah’s open records portal. I’m a big proponent of access to state and local government information, and this portal appears to do a pretty good job of pulling Utah information into a single place.

I also saw for the first time this week this article from 2013 about using accessible language. The author points out that

“[Cognitively accessible language is] needed to allow the widest variety of people with disabilities to participate in conversations about themselves. We cannot allow certain disabilities to stand in for others.”

Her main point, however, is about academic writing and how what I’ll call “academic-style” writing and standard peer review exclude people from the academy. I agree with her, and you should read the article.

Nicole

This week I’m excited to announce something I’ve been helping to plan for months: the University of Illinois is hosting a student-led Symposium on LIS Education in April! Submissions for sessions are currently being accepted, so you should all consider proposing a session! The Symposium will bring students together to develop solutions to current challenges facing LIS education today by providing a space for productive and collaborative discussion. Attendance is *free* and there will be a large virtual component to the conference. So even if you cannot attend in-person, please consider attending and even presenting virtually! Feel free to email me if you have any questions!