This past weekend was the 2nd Annual Reclaim Your Domain Hackathon. Or at least that’s what we’re calling it, even though we're already plotting to hold another one this fall, to coincide with OpenEd. The event was a follow-up to some of the plotting that Jim Groom, Kin and I started at a “Reclaim Open" event at the MIT Media Lab last year, as well as to conversations we had earlier this year at Emory University’s Domain Incubator. I'm really interested in Amber Case's idea of the "templated self" and how these acts of reclamation can offer students more freedom in the development of themselves as learners. [...]
Hack Education Weekly News: BS, the New LMS
Well this week fucking sucked. I've included quite a few things in this week's round-up that aren't specifically focused on "education." But they're about politics, children, democracy, and sadly violence and death. Meanwhile, the big LMS companies partied on with their annual developer conference. Blackboard has a new UI, so that changes everything. And Desire2Learn has rebranded as Brightspace. BS. [...]
2010-2011 Ed-Tech Startups: Where Are They Now (Updated)
An update to a post I wrote last year about the status of the ed-tech startups I covered while I was at ReadWriteWeb. That was a good post (damn, it's a good feeling to go back to old stories and nod at one's handiwork). After chatting today with the founder of Edshelf, whose company (sadly) is closing at the end of the month, I decided to circle back around to that post. I feel like we're not doing a good job talking about the "lessons learned" in ed-tech. Maybe because there is very little oppositional, investigative ed-tech press. I dunno. [...]
Hack Education Weekly News: The #MassiveTeaching MOOC Mystery
In this week's news: some guy thought he'd be funny and launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise $10 to make some potato salad. He's raised over $40,000 so far because people are awful. Also awful: one of the accused assailants in a highly publicized sexual assault case at the University of Oregon is headed to another school to play basketball. This will be his third college, having been suspended from the previous two for sexual assault. But hey. School sports team. Senator Claire McCaskill is on the case, thankfully. But the big ed-tech news this week, I guess: the mystery surrounding the #massiveteaching MOOC. [...]
Hack Education Weekly News: Reading Rainbow's Record-breaking Kickstarter
In this week's education news: the dudes on the US Supreme Court are terrible. Edshelf says it's closing its doors, another indication (sadly) that the good guys don't win in ed-tech. The reboot of Reading Rainbow sets a record with its Kickstarter campaign. Ah nostalgia. It really does prompt folks to cough up money, doesn't it. After a week of anti-Facebook furor, PNAS issues a letter of "editorial concern" over the research it published. And RIP to YA author Walter Dean Myers. [...]
The History of "Personalization" and Teaching Machines
Over the last few weeks, there's been a flurry of blog posts debating "personalized learning." Is it a scientific theory? Is it ideology? I weigh in (I hope it's okay that I interrupt the dude-fest discussing the topic!) with some of the research from my book. See, we've been talking about "personalization" via teaching machines for almost a century now. These machines certainly predate the learning theories invoked in the blog posts. I believe that (in part) this is about scientific management, not about the science of learning. [...]
Author
Audrey Watters is an education writer, a recovering academic, a serial dropout, and some days, ed-tech's Kassandra.
Recommended Reading
- Against "Innovation", May 14, 2014
- Beneath the Cobblestones... A Domain of One's Own, April 25, 2014
- Student Data is the New Oil: MOOCs, Metaphor, and Money, October 17, 2013
- A Future With Only 10 Universities, October 15, 2013
- The Myth and Millennialism of "Disruptive Innovation", May 24, 2013
- Click Here to Save Education: Evgeny Morozov and Ed-Tech Solutionism, March 26, 2013
- Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall, March 3, 2013
- The Real Reason I Dropped Out of a PhD Program, August 29, 2012
- "The Audrey Test": Or, What Should Every Techie Know About Education?, March 17, 2012
- Apple and the Digital Textbook Counter-Revolution, January 19, 2012
- Codecademy and the Future of (Not) Learning to Code, October 28, 2011
- The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy, July 19, 2011
2013 Ed-Tech Trends
Previous Years' Trends
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