Hack Education

Part 6 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 series We spend a lot of time in ed-tech talking about the Internet, about the Web, about software. But it all relies on hardware. And I think this was a year in which we saw schools really (re)embrace and (re)up...

My apologies for the lateness and lightness of this post. But I’ve been in Paris this past week and WiFi access has been tricky and the red wine abundant. I visited both La Porte d’Enfer and Les Catacombes and I wish I could say I did so without thinking about...

Part 5 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 Series In memory of Jeffrey McManus, founder of CodeLesson and friend As with all of the trends I’m covering in my year-end review, neither the “Learn to Code” nor the “Maker Movement” are new. I’ll say it again: read Seymour...

Part 4 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 series Barely a week has gone by this year without some MOOC-related news. Much like last year, massive open online courses have dominated ed-tech conversations. But if 2012 was, as The New York Times decreed, the year of the MOOC,...

Education Law and Politics Michael McVey, a school superintendent in Steubenville, Ohio has been indicted on charges of obstructing justice and evidence-tampering for his role in the cover-up of the rape of a 16-year-old girl by two of football players. The Connecticut Attorney General released a report (PDF) on the...

Part 3 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 series The Politics of the Common Core The “edit history” and “talk” pages of Wikipedia entries can be pretty interesting, particularly when it comes to controversial topics. The entry for the “Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a great example...

MOOCs: “Not Dead Yet” For those ready to dance on the grave of MOOCs following Udacity’s “pivot” last week, well… Coursera announced today that it has raised another $20 million in investment. This brings to $63 million the Series B funding that the company raised in July (and $85 million...

Part 2 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 series I’m not going to summarize all the education-related political developments from 2013. Pardon me while I skip over the Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind waivers; the impact of sequestration and the federal government shutdown of education programs;...

The End It’s time once again for my annual review of the dominant trends in education technology. This will be the fourth year of my penning this series – long enough for me to feel like it’s become a veritable year-end tradition, and long enough for me to reflect beyond...

Education Hardware Upgrades MakerBot announced its MakerBot Academy. Its mission: “to put a MakerBot Desktop 3D Printer in every school in America.” MakerBot is working with DonorsChoose.org to help teachers fundraise for their MakerBot bundle. Google launched its Google Play for Education program this week: Android tablets and an app...