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Writing in Libraries: Processes and Pathways to Inquiry and Learning
Earlier this year, I wrote about the possibilities for libraries that embrace writing as the literacy of the masses and how libraries might function as more powerful sponsors of literacy if they...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Educational PracticeEmbracing Possibility: Lessons from Mozfest 2014
Two weekends ago, I had the opportunity to help co-“wrangle” a floor for the 2014 Mozilla Festival, better known as Mozfest. Emphasizing the space’s festival-like ethos (as opposed to typical conference drudgery),...
Category: Educational PracticeChanneling Engelbart: Augmenting Human Education
Gardner Campbell not only teaches the ideas of Doug Engelbart — the visionary who invented the mouse, hypertext and many more of the digital tools so many people use every day —...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational PracticeLooking to South Central L.A. for Back-to-School Inspiration
The past few weeks have yielded the sleepy grumbles of students, parents, and teachers alike as the school year begins anew. In preparing for my own school year, and the dozens of...
Categories: Connected Learning, Educational PracticeAddressing “The War on Learning”
I’m always interested in technology critics who are accomplished users of the tools they criticize. Elizabeth Losh, director of Academic Programs, Sixth College at UC San Diego, teaches digital rhetoric, digital journalism,...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational PracticeLearner Interest-Driven Curriculum
What most educators would call “subjects” or “disciplines,” Jeff Hopkins, principal of the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, regards as “silos” when they restrict the scope of learning and nodes of...
Category: Educational PracticeP-Tech Schools: The Remaking of Career, Technical Education
For nearly four decades, economists have been discussing what is generally referred to as skill-biased technical change. That is, the degree to which technological transformations — computerization and automation — privileges high-skill...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational PracticeStudent empowerment is the strongest connective theme through the 55 posts and interviews I’ve conducted for this blog. The educators I’ve interviewed all have one characteristic in common: they all enable students...
Category: Educational PracticeModularity, the 20 Percent and Desks with Wheels
I want to talk about the need for modularity in schools but first, I feel like I need to explain why this is such an important issue. It’s like this: the conversations...
Category: Educational PracticeThe Great Peer Learning Pyramid Scheme
I often get asked questions like these: Does peer learning really work? Don’t we need experts to learn from? Can the (proverbially) blind really lead the blind? Those are good questions and...
Category: Educational PracticeMeaningful Integration: Optimistic About iPads in Schools
Late last year, my colleague Thomas Philip and I discussed why we were so troubled by the ways the Los Angeles Unified School District bumbled its way through adopting iPads for its...
Categories: Edtech, Educational PracticeWhy Technology Alone Can’t Fix the Education Problem
For more than a decade now, I’ve internally cringed whenever someone talks about the promise of technology in education. Often, discussions of iPads, video games, laptops for all focus on the potential...
Categories: Edtech, Educational PracticeRe-imagining the Where, When, and How of Educational Practice
"Well, I guess in all honesty I would have to say that I never knew nor did I ever hear of anybody that money didn't change." (Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational Practice‘Improving Improvement’ in Education: Louis Gomez, Keynote Speaker for DML2014
While so much attention is focused on improving teaching – the controversy over using text scores as “teacher accountability” measures, for example – isn’t it also important to think about how we...
Category: Educational PracticeHacking The Classroom with Michelle Cordy, aka, “Teacher on an Urgent Quest”
As soon as she joined one of my online courses and immediately embraced co-learning, I recognized Michelle Cordy as the kind of fearless learner who makes a great teacher. A teacher can...
Category: Educational Practice
