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
Schools & Policy
No Child Left Without a Portfolio
One of the reasons why we feel very lucky these days is because we actually get some chances to get outside of the US and see firsthand what others are doing. This is our third trip to the UK this year and we get more and more impressed each time we come by what they are trying to do.
Teaching & Pedagogy
Owning the Teaching…and the Learning
We’ve been growing more frustrated lately and we’re feeling more pessimistic about the prospects for any serious change in how we as an education system see teaching and learning, and we think we’ve figured out why.
Professional Development
Marco Torres–“Quit, Complain, or Innovate”
So we had the distinct pleasure of getting a chance to chat on and off with Marco Torres the last few days and to…
Professional Development
K12 Online 2006 Conference…
Announcing the first annual "K12 Online 2006" convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools…
Professional Development
Teachers as Learners Part 27
The whole integrating technology discussion that many have been chronicling of late has been sticking in our craw for a couple of reasons. It’s becoming exceedingly clear that we have an outdated perception of what teachers need to be and that perhaps we should be hiring learners first, not just traditional “teachers.”
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Blackboard Patents the LMS…The End of Moodle and Elgg?
Dave Cormier just Skyped us with a link to this article that details the patents on learning management systems that were just awarded to…
Schools & Policy
DOPA Passes…
So the dopey House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed DOPA, and we’ve got to get our acts together to make sure Senators have more of…
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Mathcasts.org
Mathcasts.org is a wiki collecting student-produced screencasts on math topics, offering teachers imaginative curriculum options and giving students a chance to teach instead of just being tested.