Hack Education

I want to pick back up on some of the ideas I started to flesh out yesterday, based on Tressie McMillan Cottom’s recent talk on ideologies and identities in digital domains. Again, not sure where I’m going with this… Tressie highlighted the ways in which new educational technologies – MOOCs...

Warning: less than fully formed thoughts here... Democratizing Ideologies and Inequality Regimes in Digital Domains My friend, the amazing Tressie McMillan Cottom delivered a fabulous talk yesterday at the Harvard Berkman Center: “Democratizing Ideologies and Inequality Regimes in Digital Domains.” (You can find her notes and slides here, a live-blog...

This post first appeared on Educating Modern Learners It used to be fairly clear what comprised a student’s “educational record”: the information that appeared on the transcript. That is, name, address, demographics, age, grade, courses taken, and final grades. Data kept on an individual student also included attendance and behavioral...

Education Law and Politics Rand Paul is planning “a major push on education reform, including ‘education choice, school choice, vouchers, charter schools, you name it — I think we need innovation,’” reports Politico. Among the innovations Paul likes: Khan Academy. “If you have one person in the country who is,...

Reclaim Your Domain 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 talking about holding another one this fall, to coincide with OpenEd. The event was a follow-up to some of the plotting that Jim Groom,...

Everything is Horrible A Malaysian Airlines jet carrying almost 300 people was shot down in Ukraine this week. On board: about 100 AIDS researchers, heading to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Australia. Israeli troops have started a ground assault into Gaza. “291 Palestinians – most of them civilians, of...

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish I just got off the phone with Mike Lee, the founder of Edshelf, a startup that recently announced it was closing its doors at the end of the month. There’s been a grassroots hashtag campaign on the part of some educators to...

Law and Politics The FCC has approved a plan to “modernize E-Rate” and expand funding for WiFi networks at public schools and libraries. Senator Claire McCaskill released a report on sexual assault at colleges and universities. Among the findings, “More than 40 percent have not investigated a single case of...

This post first appeared on Educating Modern Learners There’s no shortage of panic-stricken headlines about teens’ technology usage – both in and out of school: bullying, sexting, gaming, Internet addiction, and so on. Of course, there’s never been a shortage of panic-stricken headlines about teens in general. Internet researcher danah...

First published on Educating Modern Learners In 1972 the computer scientist and ed-tech pioneer Alan Kay published a manifesto, “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages,” in which he described his vision for just that: a personal computer for everyone. He called this personal computer the Dynabook. It would...