Many histories of education technology start with the hornbook, a fifteenth century invention that, according to Bill Ferster, "married pedagogy and content knowledge into a physical device" — a device that allowed students to learn their letters (without tearing up or writing in an actual book, I guess). Of
An author I very much admire complained on Facebook recently that the Olympics are an example of "scarcity economics" – only one gold medal so we don't celebrate everyone's immense talent. The Games – all manner of sports contests, she said – are closely bound up in
Wow. The US is having one helluva track meet over there in Paris. I'll have more to say in Monday's newsletter – Cole Hocker!!! – as I really am trying to restrict Friday's email to news about health and fitness technology, not just news about my
As a writer about and critic of education technology, I was often asked "what's your favorite piece of ed-tech" – some sort of "gotcha" question, I reckon, in which I was supposed to confess that, in fact, I hate everything. I'd answer "
Things feel like they've shifted maybe? I mean, is this what it feels like to have hope again? None of us knows if we can do this. And we are about to do it anyway. And the combination of those truths helped me, in those vertiginous few minutes,
One of the downsides, I guess, of waiting until Sunday afternoon to write my "Extra Mile" newsletter is that it feels like everyone else has already published their "take" on the week's news. So anything I have to say feels like a repetition of
Well. The last week has been a year, hasn't it. I will have much more to say on Silicon Valley's Veep candidate and his investment portfolio, along with the latest updates on AI in education in Monday's "The Extra Mile." Let'
A terrible person once said something pithy about “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns” — and my, wouldn’t it be a better world if he had been talking about one’s first triathlon and not, say, the fabrications the Bush Administration used to justify the Iraq War. Because the
In this week's Garbage Day newsletter, Ryan Broderick argues that "content slop" is much more pervasive – the problem much more insidious – than the AI-generated memes that have garnered quite a bit of attention lately. You know, the shrimp-Jesus images that are all over Facebook. "Content
