Digital Literacy & Media
The media literacy curriculum most schools use was designed for a search-era internet. The feed era requires different lessons, and the work has gotten harder.
Long-term homeschoolers do not teach everything themselves. How outsourcing classes, joining co-ops, and finding tutors fits into a sustainable homeschool.
Lesson-planning AI is one of the few clearly working AI use cases in classrooms. Which tools deliver, what they cannot replace, and how to evaluate them.
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
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.
“AI lesson-planning tools that don’t waste teachers’ time”
24 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.
“The UnCommon Core”
20 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.
“The first ten days: what new teachers should actually focus on”
18 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.
“Which Coursera certificates employers actually recognize”
8 posts
Some Coursera certificates clear resume screens. Most do not. Which credentials function as hiring signals and which are decoration.
Flagship public universities now charge non-residents two and a half to three times in-state tuition. The math has shifted enough to be worth a fresh look.
Most of how the year goes is decided in the first ten days. New teachers should front-load routines, names, and tone, not lesson plans for September.
Saxon, Singapore, and Beast Academy are not interchangeable. Each does a specific job well and others poorly. A guide to picking the right one for your kid.
Three K-12 LMSes dominate, and they optimize for different things. A practical comparison for districts and departments choosing or rethinking their stack.
Bootcamps have matured. The hype is gone, the field is smaller, and the picture is honest enough now to compare schools and outcomes seriously.
Early decision and early action are not interchangeable, and the admit-rate gap between ED and regular decision is misleading. A practical guide for seniors weighing both.
The test-optional moment in American college admissions has had three phases. The first was the pre-pandemic era, when a small number of colleges (Bowdoin,…