EdTech & Classroom Tools
Several free or near-free gradebook tools work for individual teachers, homeschool families, and microschools. The trade-offs vs paid enterprise platforms, in plain terms.
YouTube is the largest open educational resource on the internet. The skill of using it seriously is the skill of resisting the platform's defaults.
Senior year compresses the college admissions process into one academic year. A working month-by-month plan, from late summer through May 1 decision day.
Honest reviews of the apps, platforms, AI tools, and devices teachers are asked to adopt. We assess what genuinely helps students think, what just keeps them busy, and what's heavily marketed without earning its place.
“Free alternatives to expensive grade-book and assessment software”
27 posts
Reading, writing, and thinking in a media environment that wasn't built in students' interest. We cover information literacy, source evaluation, attention, and what it means to be a careful reader and a credible writer online.
“Teaching media literacy in an algorithm-shaped attention environment”
25 posts
What happens to teaching when policy meets practice. We write about school systems, assessment regimes, district decisions, and the quiet politics that shape what's possible inside the classroom.
“Chronic absenteeism, three years on: what the data actually shows”
21 posts
How real classrooms work, lesson by lesson. We write about instructional design, classroom practice, and the small craft decisions that shape what students actually learn, separating durable pedagogy from passing fashion.
“Differentiation that doesn’t double your prep time”
19 posts
Notes on how teachers actually grow. We cover conferences worth attending, PD that doesn't waste a Saturday, and the case for treating educators as career-long learners rather than topped-off skill sets.
“ISTE 2010: Easy…Not Free”
16 posts
MOOCs, course platforms, bootcamps, and the rest of the open-web learning economy. We cover where online courses deliver, where they don't, and how adults are actually picking up new skills outside traditional classrooms.
“Using YouTube as a serious learning platform: how to filter the signal”
11 posts
Most differentiation advice fails the prep-time test. The teachers who do it sustainably differentiate at narrow points and accept the middle of the lesson is the same for everyone.
Homeschooling a kid with ADHD requires a different daily structure than typical homeschool. The shorter blocks, movement breaks, and outsourced co-op time that actually work.
The 1:1 elementary device push was an overcorrection. The case for fewer screens in younger classrooms is stronger than the device-vendor materials suggest.
Cohort-based courses charge much more than self-paced alternatives. The format works for some learners and subjects and not others. A practical evaluation framework.
Major selection matters in a few specific fields and matters much less than the cultural anxiety suggests in most. A guide to figuring out which case you are in.
Chronic absenteeism doubled during the pandemic and has not fully recovered. What the current numbers show, why they persist, and which interventions are working.
The math of homeschooling on one income is more workable than people assume and harder than the social-media version suggests. The honest line items, in order.
The K-12 device wars settled into a partial truce. Chromebooks dominate by unit count; iPads still win in specific contexts. A guide to mixed deployments.