I never intended to default on my student loans. Like I said, I had a plan. After graduation, I spent a few years teaching English abroad and paid my student loans every month without fail. When that job finished, I moved to New York for graduate school and deferred my loans while studying for my master’s degree in education. But then a funny thing happened. I decided that I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. I had no idea what I wanted to do career-wise—I had some vague idea of doing something in book publishing—but other than that, I was at a loss. I was also broke and about $20,000 in debt to the U.S. Department of Education.... read the full post.

"Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal (linked below) misunderstands why we have a computing labor shortage. MOOCs definitely make “computing education” (in general) accessible to more people. But that doesn’t mean that we’ll shrink the computing labor shortage, as described by Code.org. Undergraduate computing education is “accessible” to everyone on campus, but rarely draws more than 15% women. We have to go from “accessible” to “engaging.” Unless we draw in women and under-represented minorities, we can’t close the jobs-graduates gap. We have to change how we teach to draw more women and under-represented minorities, and MOOCs don’t teach that way."... read the full post.

"Moocs make education borderless, gender-blind, race-blind, class-blind and bank account-blind." Um, I call BS. ... read the full post.

My interview with InformED. On ed-tech: "It always seems to be the “hot new thing,” always with the promise of “revolutionizing education” — even though EdTech has a lengthy history, much of it supporting old pedagogical practices rather than really changing things."... read the full post.

"Increasingly, I have the sense that many endorsements of MOOCs exemplify the politician's syllogism, which goes like this: 1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. Therefore, we must do this. The Silicon Valley solutionist version of the politician's syllogism assumes that the "something" of premise one is a problem addressable by technological change, and that the "something" of premise two is a technological solution. Such is one of the ways MOOCs are often presented."... read the full post.

Ian Bogost: "MOOCs are often discussed as an educational technology, as a new way of teaching. This is true to some extent, even if these courses look far less “disruptive” when understood in relation to the long tradition of online and distance learning. Will Oremus has offered a convincing (and deflationary) account of MOOCs’ potential as course material, suggesting that they are best understood as a replacement for traditional textbooks."... read the full post.

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen offers food for thought (for me at least) about education technology journalism as he discusses Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and political journalism. "This is the life of a political journalist, although it is equally correct to say that Glenn is a lawyer who writes about the fate of the republic rather than practicing law. He is also an activist, if we mean by that someone who thinks his fellow citizens should wake up and change things, and who participates himself within the limits of the forms he has chosen. With Greenwald the forms are writing, blogging, researching, political commentary in the “reported opinion” style, public speaking and appearing on television. He is good at all of them. Edward Snowden’s decision to leak to Greenwald, and Glenn’s domination of newsland for several days tells us that politics: none is just one way of excelling at political journalism. I do not think it invalid. It simply has to share the stage with politics: some. Together they make for a strong press."... read the full post.