A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my friend Eli Luberoff, the founder and CEO of Desmos. It was news I'd been anticipating — dreading, really — for some time: the startup had been acquired. Amplify was buying its curriculum division; the calculator part would become a free-standing public benefit corporation. The subject of the email from Eli said "good news," and I don't mean to imply that it isn't a good deal for him, for his employees, for his investors, or for Desmos users. But for me, well, it was a sign of something else altogether. (That said, let's check back in in a few ..read more

This is the transcript of the keynote I gave today at Digifest. (Well, I recorded it a couple of weeks ago, but it was broadcast today, and I popped in for some "live" Q&A afterwards, where I was asked the obligatory "do you hate all ed-tech" question. And here I was, trying to be all sweetness and light...) Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. I'm happy to be here — and when I say "here," I do mean in my apartment, in sunny California. Personally, I'm not ready to travel yet, not remotely interested in getting back on an airplane — because let's be honest, air trave ..read more

I'd wager it's the most frequently told story about ed-tech — one told with more gusto and more frequency even than "computers will revolutionize teaching" and "you can learn anything on YouTube." Indeed, someone invoked this story just the other day when chatting with me about the current shape and status of our education system: the school bell was implemented to acclimate students for life as factory workers, to train them to move and respond on command, their day broken into segments of time dictated by the machine rather than the rhythms of pre-industrial, rural life. It's a story that se ..read more

Hack Education, as perhaps you've noticed, has been on hiatus for a while. What with the pandemic, the death of my son, and the publication of Teaching Machines, I really couldn't continue to pay attention to the day-to-day nonsense of ed-tech. (The book, in fairness, did have me focused on some of the mid-20th century nonsense.) And after taking a long break from "current events," I am not quite sure I'm ready to face any of it again. But I suppose I must. There is no safety net for freelance writers and independent scholars; no bereavement leave; no institutional support to help me get throu ..read more

It's here ..read more

Teaching Machines is available for pre-order via the MIT Press website (and anywhere books are sold — consider supporting your local bookseller). I spent a few days trying to revamp the Teaching Machines website — before deciding that the template I had was just fine. Now I'm in the process of updating all my various social media accounts with a new profile pic based off the cover. I absolutely love the cover, by the way. I wanted this photo to be used, but I wasn't sure permissions could be arranged. (That is, I wasn't sure the copyright holder could even be found.) I'll be writing more in th ..read more

I was a speaker today at the #AgainstSurveillance teach-in, a fundraiser for Ian Linkletter who is being sued by the online test-proctoring software company Proctorio. I am very pleased but also really outraged to be here today to help raise money for Ian Linkletter's defense and, more broadly, to help raise awareness about the dangers of ed-tech surveillance. It's nice to be part of an event where everyone is on the same page — politically, pedagogically — and I needn't be the sole person saying "hey wait, folks. This ed-tech stuff is, at best, snake oil and, at worst, fascist." The challenge ..read more

I was a guest today in Chris Hoadley's NYU class on ed-tech and globalization. Here's a bit of my rant... Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you today. I have been really stumped as to what I should say. If you look at the talks I've given this year — and I've done quite a lot since I've volunteered to visit Zoom school and speak to classes — there are a couple of notable themes: behaviorism and surveillance. I could talk about both of these for hours, and I want to leave plenty of time after I rant at you for a bit for us to maybe tackle some of these issues. It’s worth noting that ..read more

Here are my remarks today from a Contact North webinar with Paul Prinsloo: "Why Technology is Not the Answer." So I want to apologize at the outset for being a bit unprepared for today's webinar. As you may well know, things have been a bit of a mess in the US lately — I mean, for at least the past four years, probably longer. But certainly for the past few months, weeks, and days. I started to prepare my remarks on Tuesday — election day in the US. As it stands, two days later, we still do not know the winner of the Presidential race. We do not know what Donald Trump will do with the 75 days ..read more

I have volunteered to be a guest speaker in classes this term. Yesterday, I talked to the students in Roxana Marachi's educational psychology class at San Jose State. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to your class. I will confess at the outset: I've never taken a class in educational psychology before. Never taken any psychology course, for that matter. My academic background, however, is in literature where one does spend quite a bit of time talking about Sigmund Freud. And I wrote my master's thesis in Folklore on political pranks, drawing in part on Freud's book Jokes and Their ..read more