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
Professional Development
The Steep “Unlearning Curve”
One of the most challenging pieces of moving education forward in a systemic way is the “unlearning curve” that teachers and educators have to go through to see new possibilities. This post explores how our ability to publish, connect, and collaborate via the Read/Write Web demands that we unlearn traditional assumptions about expertise, classrooms, curriculum, and literacy, and offers 10 specific ideas we need to unlearn.
Digital Literacy & Media
On Being “Clickable”
Reflecting on what it means to be highly visible and “clickable” online, and why educators and students need to experience networked learning, not just publish content.
Schools & Policy
Dispatches from the Front Lines (Cont.)
So here’s a concept. Teach the kids how to use Google images instead of blocking it so that the elementary school teachers can actually find pictures of doves to supplement their lessons.
Schools & Policy
The “Perfect Storm” for Education
We explore how the Read/Write Web is disrupting traditional models in journalism, music, business, and politics, and ask when similar forces—especially open educational content and changing teacher-learner relationships—will finally trigger a radical re-envisioning of K12 education.
Schools & Policy
Beware the Cell Phone
New York City’s proposed cell phone lockers highlight how schools may be missing an opportunity: instead of banning and charging students to stow phones, we could be teaching them to use mobile devices as learning tools. As mobile social networking grows and phones become powerful platforms worldwide, especially through SMS, schools need to experiment with ways to leverage the devices already in students’ pockets.
Schools & Policy
Dispatches From the Front Lines
This e-mail showed up in our inbox today: A few weeks ago, our school began to block Wikipedia. When we asked why, we were…
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Reason #84 to Teach Blogs and Wikis: National Security
Great article in the New York Times magzine today on the burgeoning use of blogs and wikis by government intelligence agencies to capture and connect information and turn it into knowledge.
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Using Pageflakes as Student Portal
We share how we’ve been using Pageflakes in RSS workshops to create topic-specific student portals, and why these dynamic, customizable pages can be powerful tools for teaching content management, RSS, and global awareness.