Hack Education

I confess. I’m a little perplexed by the recent call to create a new discipline for education technology. There are already hundreds of academic conferences and academic publications and professional organizations and published studies devoted to education technology; hundreds of schools offer degrees – primarily graduate degrees – in education...

Presidential Campaign Politics Via Politico: “Donald Trump has put wealthy universities on alert. He warned colleges and universities Thursday night that those schools that don’t spend their endowments to directly benefit students could lose the tax break on their endowments.” Via the Pacific Standard: “Here’s the Lowdown on Trump’s New...

This talk was presented today at the Designs on eLearning conference. The full slide deck is available here. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. I confess: I was immediately intrigued by the theme to this year’s conference – “Anxiety and Security.” By centering these...

Education Politics An incredible piece of reporting by The Guardian on corporate lobbying and influence in Wisconsin politics following Scott Walker’s anti-union efforts in the state. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has reiterated his promise for free community college tuition for eligible high school graduates. From the press release: “The...

Earlier this year, Microsoft made headlines when it debuted Tay, a new chatbot modeled to speak like a teenage girl, which rather dramatically turned into “a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours” of its release, as The Telegraph put it. The Twitter bot was built to “learn” by parroting the...

Presidential Campaign Politics Via the Washington Post: “Trump pitches $20 billion education plan at Ohio charter school that received poor marks from state.” The plan: vouchers and “choice.” Also via WaPo: “Trump pays IRS a penalty for his foundation violating rules with gift to aid Florida attorney general.” That “gift”...

Education Politics Via Education Week: “Maine Gov. Paul LePage has called for a review of his state’s groundbreaking 1-to–1 student computing initiative, highlighting the growing pains nagging an educational-technology movement now well into its second decade.” Via the Huffington Post: “On Wednesday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) declared via executive...

Education Politics “Members of Congress are in an unusual position as they demand an explanation for Mylan NV's 400 percent price hike for the EpiPen and focus attention squarely on its CEO: Heather Bresch,” Bloomberg reports. Bresch, whose father is a senator from West Virginia, had successfully lobbied to have...

Maha Bali has written a blog post asking why we talk about “a domain of one’s own” and “reclaim your domain” since people never really own their domains. They merely rent them, she points out. My understanding of ownership is that something belongs to me. That I have already acquired...

Education Politics One of the big stories this week: the US Department of Education’s announcement about which “non-traditional providers” (MOOCs, coding bootcamps) will be eligible for financial aid as part of its EQUIP experiment. More details in the for-profit higher ed section below. Via ProPublica: “New Jersey lawmakers have announced...