Last week, Textyard announced that it was open sourcing the technology that it had used to build its website, a pricing comparison for college textbooks. Textyard utilizes a "Web scraper," a way to harvest data from the Web in order to do so. The startup's founders are on to new projects now but they say they hope that by open-sourcing the scraper, more students and programmers will be able to build tools to help make textbook pricing more transparent. [...]
Why You Should Care about a "Scratch for HTML5"?
This post was prompted by a question Steve Hargadon asked me during our podcast this weekend: namely, why should the readers of Hack Education care about the research I'm doing for Mozilla. After all, roughly a third of the posts I wrote last week were part of that research project. As those posts are really just my notes from various interviews, perhaps they aren't the most compelling reading. But I think the ideas they touch upon are really important. And so here's one attempt to answer the question about why you should care about (and what exactly I mean by) a "Scratch for HTML5." [...]
Weekly Ed-Tech Podcast with Steve Hargadon
Every week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to discuss the latest ed-tech news and the stories that I've written here on Hack Education. In this week's podcast, we talk about the early results out of Auburn, Maine's iPad implementation, the Horizon Report, my research project for Mozilla and more. [...]
Ed-Tech Horizons
The Horizon Report is a decade old. Every year, it issues several reports analyzing "what's on the horizon" for educational technology. As much as the tools the committee members pick are interesting, so too is the whole metaphor around "horizons" and ed-tech, as it echoes some of my feelings lately about what's always out-of-reach. [...]
Ed-Tech Weekly News Roundup: Library.nu Forced Offline, Kno Sues Cengage
In this week's headlines, President Obama presents his 2013 budget, including a 2.5% increase in discretionary funding for education and a "Race to the Top" for higher ed. E-book app-maker Kno sues the textbook publisher Cengage for breach of contract. Library.nu gets the ax. Librarians at Harvard are offered early retirement. And stuff. [...]
Learning Without Context Isn't Learning: My Interview with Julie Meloni
The final write-up of a trio of interviews I conducted today as part of my writing/research project for Mozilla. This one's with Julie Meloni, who -- full disclosure -- I consider a dear friend. She's also responsible for teaching me a lot about HTML and Web-building, once upon a time several lifetimes ago when we were both grad student bloggers. So, should Mozilla build a "Scratch for HTML5"? Not according to Julie. [...]
Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum: My Interview with Phil Wagner
The next in my series of interviews about whether Mozilla should build a "Scratch for HTML5." Wagner is a science and math teacher, a programmer, and a Google curriculum fellow. Wagner and I talked about teaching CS -- as a discipline for some or as a principle for everyone. We also talked a bit about what this hypothetical HTML5 teaching-building tool should look like. [...]
The Spirit of Scratch: My Interview with Vanessa Gennarelli
Another interview as part of my research/writing project for Mozilla. Vanessa Gennarelli is a Harvard grad student, a student and an instructor at P2PU, a Scratcher, an editor at Flat World Knowledge, and a poet. We talked today about a number of things -- mostly how sharing and community can support creation. There was also talk of robot graders. I couldn't help myself... [...]
Author
Audrey Watters is a technology journalist, freelance writer, ed-tech advocate, recovering academic, rabble-rouser, and single mom.
Podcast
(Shorter) Hack Ed — Ed-Tech Links
- Libraries Receiving a Shrinking Piece of the University Pie February 17, 2012
- Recommended: 4:00-16:00 February 15, 2012
- About the Emerging Battle Over Textbooks: Options from Apple to Open Initiatives February 14, 2012
- Envisioning a Post-Campus America February 14, 2012
- Mozilla's (Working) Learning Design Principles February 09, 2012
- The Value of Making Reading Hard February 08, 2012
- Personal Tutors and Paying for Good Grades: Roland Fryer's Experiments on Children February 08, 2012
- How to freak out the Secret Service at the White House science... February 07, 2012
- Proper Spelling? Its Tyme to Let Luce! February 05, 2012
- The long tail may not hit a target: High school teachers February 05, 2012
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