EdTech & Classroom Tools
The case against more screens in elementary classrooms
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.
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Cohort-based courses (Maven and others): are they worth the price?
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.
Picking a college major when you don’t know what you want
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.
Topics
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.
“The case against more screens in elementary classrooms”
26 posts
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.
“Teaching media literacy in an algorithm-shaped attention environment”
25 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.
“Chronic absenteeism, three years on: what the data actually shows”
21 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 first ten days: what new teachers should actually focus on”
18 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.
“Cohort-based courses (Maven and others): are they worth the price?”
10 posts
Recent writing
Homeschooling
What a real homeschool week looks like, not the Instagram version
Homeschooling has had a strange decade. The pandemic pulled hundreds of thousands of families into it who had never considered it, and a meaningful…
Teaching & Pedagogy
The lesson plan structure that survives most edtech fads
Every few years a new framework arrives that promises to fix lesson planning. SOLO taxonomy, Understanding by Design, project-based learning, the flipped classroom, then…
EdTech & Classroom Tools
AI in the classroom three years in: what’s working, and what isn’t
The first wave of stories about ChatGPT in schools was about cheating. The second wave was about bans. The third, finally, has been about…
Online Learning
MOOCs at fifteen: what worked, what didn’t, and what’s quietly replacing them
Massive open online courses turned fifteen this year. Coursera launched in 2012, Udacity the same year, edX in 2013. Back then, the rhetoric was…
Digital Literacy & Media
10 Years of Blogging: Time for a Change and a Book
After a decade of blogging, we’re shifting how and where we share, moving to a new space better suited to curation and conversation, and announcing a forthcoming book of collected posts whose proceeds will support learning initiatives.
Schools & Policy
The UnCommon Core
We argue that our testing-obsessed education system is failing to prepare kids for a complex future, and we propose an "UnCommon Core" of skills and understandings—from living lightly on the Earth to networked learning and democratic participation—that every child should develop, taught through rich, integrated, real-world contexts rather than test-driven, siloed curricula.
Teaching & Pedagogy
And What Do YOU Mean by Learning?
The biggest learning news in our house last week came from our 13-year-old daughter Tess, whose experiences with high jump and a trip to Washington DC raised powerful questions about what we really mean by "learning" and how rarely "productive learning" happens in schools.
Online Learning
Personal Learning Networks (An Excerpt)
Seventh/eighth grade teacher Clarence Fisher describes his “thin walled” classroom in Snow Lake, Manitoba, where students regularly use the Web to collaborate globally. His work illustrates how networked learning environments deepen critical thinking and problem solving, challenge traditional school structures built on scarcity of knowledge and teachers, and shift control of learning toward connected, social, online/offline experiences that mirror the real world students are entering.