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The House that TurnItIn Built
I gave this talk this afternoon at Concordia University, as part of the SkepTech series questioning education technology. Today's bird, which does not appear anywhere in the talk, is the house sparrow, which along with the pigeon is one of the most widely distributed wild birds, thanks in
Present Company Excepted
“Generative 'AI' is here to stay." We hear this a lot. But a reminder: this is not a statement of fact. It is an assertion, but it is merely speculation. The future is unwritten – much to the consternation of those who’d like very much to dictate
Autumn
To Dismantle Democracy, You Subvert Public Schools
For at least the past fifty years*, conservatives have made substantial efforts to dismantle public education, through a variety of policies, practices, and story-lines: budget cuts, vouchers, charter schools, anti-tax measures, anti-union initiatives, “free to choose” and “failing school” narratives. And of course, through education technology initiatives.
What Does Defiance Taste Like?
Caching Behavior
Click Here to Comply
Perhaps you’ve read Ben Riley’s exposé on AlphaSchool’s “boot camp” -- along with his follow-up in which the school provides even more creepy details on the bizarre eight-week training program that high school students enrolled in the private school must complete. Perhaps you haven’t. Perhaps
Move Slow, Remake Things
In the prologue to their book Tinkering Toward Utopia, historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban highlight the tensions in how Americans think about schooling: we have, almost since the nation’s outset, believed in the transformative power of education; and yet, despite the importance we grant to education and our
This Might Save a Life
Come Up to the Lab and See What's on the Slab
You could argue, I suppose, that recent chatter in and around the field of education technology is only reliant on cliches because it’s the summer (in the northern hemisphere, at least), and everyone’s brain is in some sort of low-engagement rest-mode. I’m not saying that’
Take the Cannoli
A Technology of Unlearning
It's a saying that appears in multiple iterations across multiple slide decks and cited in multiple books, all extolling some sort of highly technological future of education: something about the need to constantly be learning, relearning, unlearning. I roll my eyes whenever I see this, particularly when it’
Reading Notes
(Not) Everything Changes
"This changes everything." I find this cliche about technology to be so exhausting, in no small part because I've heard it over and over and over again. Every new product release, a revolution. After a while, you have to decide whether you're going to
No End in Sight
What Stories Are We Told?
“Many decades ago, humans developed a process by which they could go into a store, pick an item off the shelf, and pay for it at the checkout counter. A few years ago, we lost it. Now you ring a buzzer, wait for an overworked employee to unlock an item
Kids These Days
Who Is Ed-Tech For?
Who is ed-tech for? The marketing copy -- whether on websites or in PowerPoint or in TED Talks and the like -- will all insist that ed-tech is, at the end of the day, for "the students." Even the products that are pitched to make teachers' and
Everyone Should Get to Play
The Future, Unevenly Distributed
“The future is here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” This quotation, attributed to science fiction author William Gibson, is often used to imply that some lucky few, particularly those surrounded by silicon gadgetry, live in some glorious high-tech promised land; while the rest of us, without access
She's So Sure
End Over End
The Atlantic has pronounced that “The End of Reading is Here,” the latest in a long series of stories, there and elsewhere, that lament that no one -- but specifically no student -- reads anymore. They don’t read; they can’t read. When I say “long series,” I really do mean
