Hack Education

Education Politics Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has released his higher education plan. Among its features: “Bush’s plan would eliminate the federal student loan program in its current form in favor of a new financing structure that is tied to students’ income. Under the plan, the federal government would provide...

Education Politics President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address Tuesday evening. “Education” showed up several times in the speech, including the idea that every students need to learn to “write computer code.” The Department of Education’s Inspector General is auditing Western Governors University over the role faculty...

If you’ve worked in education technology for any length of time, you know the story: in January 2006, Blackboard was awarded the patent (number 6988138) on the learning management system – or as described in the patent title “Internet-based education support system and methods.” In July of that year, Blackboard...

Education Politics Arne’s officially out, and John King is now Acting Secretary of Education. (And the for-profit college sector has already reached out to him, no surprise.) The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior College, the accreditor for California’s community colleges, lost its appeal to the Department of Education and...

Education Politics Happy New Year. From US News & World Report: “For technology companies in California, ringing in the New Year will mean adjusting to a new privacy law that limits how they can collect and use student data. The data privacy legislation was originally signed into law by Gov....

The Trends The Politics of Education Technology Standardized Testing “The Employability Narrative” Credits and Credentialing The Collapse of For-Profit Higher Education (Or Not) Beyond the MOOC The Compulsion for Data Social Media, Campus Activism, and Free Speech Indie Ed-Tech The Business of Ed-Tech The GitHub Repo If you’re interested in...

Education Politics “Clinton: ‘I Wouldn’t Keep Any School Open That Wasn’t Doing A Better Than Average Job.’” No schools in Lake Wobegon will be required to close. “Creationist Sylvia Allen to lead Arizona Senate education panel.” What could go wrong? Via the Hechinger Report: “As he leaves the U.S. Department...

This is the tenth and final article in my series Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2015 Who’s Funded/Who’s Funding In February of this year, Techcrunch, one of the original Silicon Valley-focused tech blogs, looked back on venture funding during 2014 and pronounced that an ed-tech investment revival was underway. But by...

This is the ninth article in my series Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2015 Here’s what I wrote last year when I chose “the Indie Web” as one of the “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2014”: This is an aspirational post. After some 35,000 words in a series that has been pretty...

This is the eighth article in my series Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2015 As long as I’ve written these year-in-review stories, starting back in 2010, I’ve noted some of the tensions surrounding social media and schools. On one hand, social media gets touted as facilitating “connected” or “social” learning, “personal...