In this week's education news: edX expands to more universities, more than doubling the size of its "xconsortium"; the Chicago Board of Education votes to close 49 schools, the largest public school closure in the country's history; the Pew Internet Center releases a report on teens, social media, and privacy; the Boy Scouts agree to allow gay youth as members; Knewton partners with Macmillan; News Corp's board approves its split; Tinkercad is saved from closure by Autodesk; and more. [...]
The Myth and the Millennialism of "Disruptive Innovation"
Blah blah blah disruption blah blah blah innovation blah blah blah hybrid innovation blah blah blah omg is that a new and disruptive idea blah blah blah yeah maybe but whatever blah blah blah oh yeah I suppose these predictions are revised all the time right blah blah blah right blah blah blah it's the end of the world as we know it blah blah blah but i feel fine blah blah blah [...]
Hack Education Weekly News: A MOOC Master's Degree
In this week's education news, Udacity, Georgia Tech, and AT&T team up to offer an online master's degree in computer science; Yale joins Coursera; charges are dropped against Keira Wilmot, the Florida teen who caused a small explosion in her science class; Google announces an education-focused app store at its annual developer conference; college enrollments are down, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center; and it looks like more schools have backed out of 2U's Semester Online consortium. [...]
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Google Play for Education Versus...
Ah Google. How we drank the "don't be evil" kool-aid. How we rallied around you in the face of proprietary tech giants like Microsoft and Apple and Oracle. How you betray us. And oh, hey, Google launched a new product at Google IO with "education" in the title. Even thought the company has killed Android App Inventor and Google Reader and Google Wave and lots of tools that educators have found useful, you should totally hop on board this latest train, right? Um... [...]
On 'Viral" Education Videos
There's something that hasn't sat quite right with me about the whole Jeff Bliss story. The video. The attention. The teacher-bashing. The insistence that this represents a radical (and just randomly videotaped) freedom of expression of student agency. So I've taken some time to dig into how the stories was spread via social media and major websites. There's no smoking gun here -- but rather a reflection of how strong the narratives of a "broken system" are and how they appeal across multiple divides. [...]
Hack Education Weekly News: MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs
In this week's education news, the press release touting "MOOCs plus free textbooks!" was drowned out by many schools issuing "No thanks, MOOCs" announcements. Also, the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled that the state's voucher program was unconstitutional, Cengage indicated that it might declare bankruptcy, Promethean issued its quarterly earnings, which no one expected to be that great anyways, and Pearson admitted that it's screwed up, yet again, with the New York Gifted and Talented standardized testing. [...]
Coursera, Chegg, and the Education Enclosure Movement
This is a really long and rambling post to the news today that Coursera is partnering with Chegg. Massive online education startup plus massive textbook distribution startup. It's disruptive innovation, we hear. Except when you look more closely, this isn't that innovative at all. And with textbook publishers -- traditional, proprietary textbook publishers -- piling in on a system that is decidedly anti-Web, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be disrupting here -- except "openness." [...]
Foundations of Education Technology (A MOOC Proposal)
A promo post for a course that George Veletsianos and I have submitted for Iversity's MOOC production fellowship. I've threatened for a long, long time that I was going to turn my thoughts on "what every technology entrepreneur needs to know about education" into a class -- and here you go. Details about the class (which is just a proposal at this stage) here. [...]
Author
Audrey Watters is an education writer, rabble-rouser, rambler, recovering academic, lifelong learner, serial dropout, part-time badass, mom.
Podcast
Hack Education Podcast with Steve HargadonLatest episode: February 11, 2013
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The Comments Are Closed
Audrey Watters on 16 May, 2013
I've scrapped comments on this blog. I've been debating doing this for a long while now. And while I'm disappointed that it's come to this -- disappointed in myself for not having the time to moderate, disappointed in people for being such jackasses -- I've had to do it. I'm not unreachable. You can email me, tweet at me, post on Facebook, write on my Google+ page, IM me, or write on your own blog. It's not that I don't want to engage with others' ideas. I just don't want to spend my time wading through and moderating comments as I do so. No comments are better than unmoderated comments. [...]