Hack Education

This post first appeared on Educating Modern Learners Twitter for Edu In recent years Twitter has become a very popular tool for educators, with some calling the social media platform "The Best Professional Development Tool for Teachers” and some claiming that educators “dominate” Twitter. (The math doesn’t really work out...

Part 8 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series This is an aspirational post. After some 35,000 words in a series that has been pretty critical about the state of education technology in 2014, I want to write about something that gives me hope. I believe we can do...

Part 7 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series It’s the fourth year in a row that I’ve chosen “data and privacy” as one of the most important ed-tech trends. (See 2013, 2012, 2011.) I’m not sure if I expected things to change substantially after last year’s revelations of...

Part 6 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series Last year, I opened my look at the trend I then called “standards” by looking at the number of edits to the Wikipedia entry for the Common Core State Standards. This is what I wrote: The “edit history” and “talk”...

I’m halfway through my year-end review of (what I think are) the important trends in education technology in 2014. The word count for the series so far hovers around 25,000, and I have a lot more to say. (I’m sorry. You’re welcome.) This project is a substantial undertaking, but I...

Education Law and Politics The US House of Representatives (barely) passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill this week. While education spending will remain mostly flat, there are a number of cuts to education programs, including $303 million to the Pell Grant program. (However, Pell Grants will now be available to...

Part 5 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series I’m not a big fan of using the Hype Cycle to explain the adoption of technologies. The Hype Cycle is a great piece of marketing for the research firm Gartner, but I’m not sure of its utility beyond that. Yes,...

Part 4 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series MOOOOOOOOOOOOOCs! First there were MOOCs. Then there were MOOCs!!!111 Then we witnessed the MOOC backlash. Then the MOOC backlash backlash. And maybe even the MOOC backlash backlash backlash. At this point, it’s hard to keep track. As I look back...

Part 3 in my Top 10 Trends of 2014 series One of the challenges of pulling together this year end series is that education technology doesn’t break down neatly into ten separate trends. “The Business of Ed-Tech” bleeds into the politics of ed-tech, for example. The next few posts in...

The LAUSD iPad Saga Continues: A Federal Grand Jury Investigation FBI agents took some 20 boxes of documents from LAUSD offices in what looks to be a federal grand jury investigation into the deal with Pearson, Apple, and the district. It's unclear if LAUSD or one of the companies is...