Hack Education

Theinitial reviewsfor the newKindle Firehave been fairly lukewarm, manytech punditspronouncing that the new Amazon tablet will be no iPad killer. That may well be true, although there is already speculation about which device will behotter this holiday season. But just how hot will the Kindle Fire be in education? Read...

I write a lot about some of the prevailing narratives in education technology. (I can't help it; it's my literature and folklore background). "Sputnik moments." Failing schools and falling test scores. But today at Lego Education's STEM Summit, I heard a strong counter-narrative to the one that says more testing...

Yesterday marked the deadline for the first round of submissions for the 2011Digital Media and Learning Competition. This year's topic: designing badges (and the supporting research) for lifelong learning. The DML Competition is tapping into a larger project underway byMozilla, with support from the MacArthur Foundation (among others). TheOpen Badges...

Does FERPA ban schools from allowing students to post their schoolwork on the open Web? Of the trio of laws that address children's and students' privacy and safety online, FERPA is often the one least cited outside of educational circles. The other two, COPPA and CIPA, tend to be in...

3 Stories about the Future of Education The Matrix Is Everywhere I don't own a TV. I don't watch TV (much. I do watch series on Netflix and I confess I bought a digital subscription on iTunes to this season's The Walking Dead). But Saturday night, I sat in a...

Politics and Policies Idaho will become the first state to mandate that all high school students take at least 2 credits online in order to graduate. The move has been very controversial, with the Idaho Education Association blasting the Board of Education's decision. The FCC announced this week that it...

My favorite story of the week: ...Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine's Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make �techshops'? In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created (such as General Assembly...

The Social Graph. It Isn't If I could assign one piece of required reading this week, it would be Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski's provocative blog post "The Social Graph Is Neither." It's partially a response to a recent Forbes article that likens the "social graph" to crude oil -- as...

It's not really news that we're failing to graduate enough students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors to fulfill the predicted "jobs of the future." An emphasis on STEM education -- at the K-12 level as well as at the college level) -- has been part of the...

What is a university? There's a legal answer to that question, of course, as well as historical, philosophical, instructional, and civic. And strictly by some of these definitions, General Assembly doesn't qualify as a university. There are no degrees awarded. There is no .edu Web domain. There is no football...