Hack Education

Every week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to talk about the latest ed-tech news. I always find our conversation to be one of the most thought-provoking exchanges I have all week.  This week, we were actually face-to-face for the recording as we were both in attendance at the DML conference in...

When I go to conferences these days, I find myself taking half my notes in Evernote and the other half on Twitter. That makes organizing my thoughts afterwards more than a little messy, particularly if I don't write blog posts right away. And thanks to the Twitter's craptastic search function,...

The winners of the "Badges for Lifelong Learning" competition were announced this past week at DML2012. It's hardly surprising, with it being the focus of the research competition, that much of the conference -- formal sessions and informal conversations -- was devoted to the questions surrounding badges: what are they...

Politics and Policies Ding dong, the Research Works Act is dead. Following a mounting boycott from academics and researchers, Elsevier -- which was a major backer of the anti-open access legislation -- withdrew its support for the bill. Shortly afterwards, Representative Darrel Issa announced he wouldn't push the bill forward....

It's a familiar refrain: we need to do more to attract and retain students in STEM majors. As a New York Times story argued late last year, one of the keys to doing so involves less lecture, more hands-on lab work in these college-level classes. But that's easier said than...

This post is part of my research for Mozilla on a tool to help novices learn to be Web-builders -- a "Scratch for HTML5" Yesterday, I sat down with Scott Gray from the O'Reilly School of Technology while we were both at Strata in Santa Clara. (Disclosure: I am currently...

  The textbook rental company Bookrenter is spinning out its technology platform today to help campuses get a better handle on course materials -- not just textbooks, but all manner of digital content. The new company is called Rafter, and among its offerings is a nifty little tool called Rafter...

Every week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to talk about the latest ed-tech news. I always find our conversation to be one of the most thought-provoking exchanges I have all week. You can listen to the latest episode (in which we discuss NYC's Teacher Data Reports, among other things) below. You...

Text-Messaging Startups: Where Are They Now? Last year, I chose text-messaging was one of the "top ed-tech trends of 2011." As I explained then, I made the selection as a reflection of a number of important trends surrounding mobile learning: the growth in cellphone ownership by K-12-age students, the acceptance...

"In Portland, you can put a bird on something and just call it art." -- Portlandia, Episode 2 Social media usage at the K-12 level has exploded over recent years, with some 40% of teachers saying they use blogs or wikis in the classroom. More social media, so the argument...