Homeschooling
Choosing a math curriculum: Saxon, Singapore, or Beast Academy
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.
Homeschooling
Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom: an honest LMS comparison
Three K-12 LMSes dominate, and they optimize for different things. A practical comparison for districts and departments choosing or rethinking their stack.
Coding bootcamps in 2026: outcomes, costs, and which ones still work
Bootcamps have matured. The hype is gone, the field is smaller, and the picture is honest enough now to compare schools and outcomes seriously.
Topics
Digital Literacy & Media
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.
“10 Years of Blogging: Time for a Change and a Book”
24 posts
EdTech & Classroom Tools
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.
“Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom: an honest LMS comparison”
23 posts
Schools & Policy
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
Teaching & Pedagogy
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 lesson plan structure that survives most edtech fads”
17 posts
Professional Development
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
Online Learning
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.
“Coding bootcamps in 2026: outcomes, costs, and which ones still work”
7 posts
Recent writing
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Fun With Google Naming…Oy
From the “Sometimes This All Scares Us” Department comes this item about parents Google-testing baby names to make sure their child wouldn’t be born unsearchable. Our kids are going to be so, so unclickable…
Schools & Policy
One Laptop Per Child Begins…$14 Billion on Easter
Chris points to pictures of Nigerian students at the first school to receive laptops in the One Laptop Per Child program, sparking thoughts about global access, inequity in US schools, and what it will take for society to prioritize meaningful opportunities for all children.
Digital Literacy & Media
“A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs”–NY Times
The front page of today’s New York Times features a story about the attempts of Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales to create a set…
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Make Your Own Google Maps…Too Cool!
Ok, so check it out, dawg… here’s an example of what you can do with the new “My Maps” feature from Google. Go on…go look.
Digital Literacy & Media
Over 2 Million Views
Karl’s “Did You Know?” video has gone viral with over two million views, sparking powerful reactions in schools and helping set the stage for a much bigger conversation about education and learning.
Teaching & Pedagogy
Stuck
We’re blog stuck, wrestling with whether “school” itself limits how we think about learning, especially as education increasingly moves beyond physical classrooms.
Teaching & Pedagogy
Sunday Caption Contest
Since we’ve decided to blow out our aggregator and start over because there’s too much information swirling around and this blog is doing a horrible job of capturing it, it’s time to play: Sunday Caption Contest.
Schools & Policy
Worse Before it Gets Better
We reflect on growing resistance to social software in schools, new legislation like state-level DOPA efforts, and troubling media coverage of teens online, arguing that meaningful change requires broader cultural understanding of learning in social networks.