What exactly is a MOOC? Like most interesting things in this world, the term avoids simple definition.

For instance, what constitutes a course? A particular body of knowledge to be delivered? Except maybe in the case of skill-based classes, like a writer's workshop. A start and end date? Except maybe in the case of self-paced, on-demand online courses. Interactions between students and instructors? Except maybe in the case of entirely computer-mediated courses or older correspondence courses. Certification or recognition of completion? Except in courses that don't offer them. A learning experience? That must be too broad, or sitting here reading this post would constitute a course.

If we can't even define exactly what a course is, how can we possibly hope to provide a clear sense of what constitutes a Massive Open Online Course?

One thing that people then do, in the ambiguous space left by our inadequate ability to precisely define, is to use analogies. We define things by comparing them to other things.

In popular discourse of MOOCs, two dominant analogies seem to have emerged in making sense of MOOCs: MOOCs as textbooks and MOOCs as courses. Consider the open letter to Harvard professor Michael Sandel published by the San Jose State University Philosophy Department. The letter explains why the philosophy department refuses to pilot Sandel's JusticeX course.

When trying to explain the threat that JusticeX poses to undergraduate education at San Jose State University and in public higher education more broadly, the philosophers describe JusticeX as a course: "When a university such as ours purchases a course from an outside vendor, the faculty cannot control the design or content of the course; therefore we cannot develop and teach content that fits with our overall curriculum and is based on both our highly developed and continuously renewed competence and our direct experience of our students' needs and abilities." Here the course is defined as whole and integral, an experience designed as a complete substitute, fixed in its boundaries and uneditable.

In other places, when explaining some of the inadequacies of MOOCs, the SJSU philosophers analogize JusticeX to a textbook: "In addition, purchasing a series of lectures does not provide anything over and above assigning a book to read." Of course, to call a MOOC, "just a book" defangs the entity in a double-edged way. If it's not much more useful than a book, then it shouldn't be much more threatening than a book. The MOOC as textbook analogy is what Sandel adopts in response to the open letter, "My goal is simply to make an educational resource freely available--a resource that faculty colleagues should be free to us in whole or in part, or not at all, as they see fit."

In pointing out this discrepancy, I'm not necessarily saying that the SJSU philosophers are being inconsistent. Reading between the lines, the fear is that JusticeX will be introduced by administrators as a textbook—modular, optional, supplementary and incomplete, but will later be used by administrators as a course—a complete substitute for the work of a faculty member and a fully acceptable learning experience for students.

Sandel also borrows from both analogies in his letter. Consider his conclusion: "The worry that the widespread use of online courses will damage departments in public universities facing budgetary pressures is a legitimate concern that deserves serious debate, at edX and throughout higher education. The last thing I want is for my online lectures to be used to undermine faculty colleagues at other institutions." When describing the looming threat, Sandel discusses "online courses." When shifting to discuss his own efforts, he returns to the less threatening "online lectures."

Should professors at Harvard or other elite institutions produce "talking textbooks?" The answer there seems to me to be very simple: an unqualified yes. Universities produce knowledge, and they should produce knowledge accessible broadly to the public.

Should professors at Harvard create collections of educational experiences that could be used as a substitute for courses offered at other institutions, at the risk of undermining faculty at other institutions? As Sandel notes, that is a more complicated question and worthy of further debate. (A good place to start this further debate is with a recent post by Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, on Harvard's ethical responsibilities here.) As these debates continue, it will be useful to track how people exploring this terrain frame the debate using analogies, metaphors, and other rhetorical tools.

As a final point, I should disclose here, that starting on June 3rd, I'll begin a position as the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow, working for HarvardX from Harvard's Office of the President and Provost. Certainly this appointment will shape my writing on the topic, though of course this space remains the preserve of my personal opinion. My hope, in both writing here and in accepting the position at Harvard, is to see if I can be of service in thinking about how emerging technologies can expand our collective capacity to create the kinds of rich, participatory, challenging, caring learning environments, similar to those that I have been very fortunate to enjoy in my own privileged life.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I've just finished up the final class in my semester long course for MIT undergraduates in the Scheller Teacher Education program. These students were an absolute delight to teach. They observed classes all semester and blogged about the experience, and while I try to finish grading their papers, I'll use some of their technology-related posts in this space. Here, student Christina Lalani describes her perspectives on the use of an interactive whiteboards in one classroom that she observed:

Today I want to address the use of technology in this class. In particular, my focus will be on the use of SMART Boards in comparison to regular whiteboards/chalkboards. The cost of a SMART Board ranges but this article describes an individual's experience with purchasing a SMART Board: http://www.modernchalkboard.com/article-cost.html Although the estimation of $5,000 may be on the higher end (especially because schools usually receive discounts for bulk purchase), let's estimate around $3,000 for a SMART Board with installation and accessories.

Here are some of the advantages I saw in the SMART Board focusing only on the lesson taught last Thursday:

1) Saving Time: Having the practice problems already typed up and available at the click of a button saved the teachers classroom time and allowed a greater focus of time on problem solving. However, it's hard to say how much of a time-saver this was because time was also lost as the teachers attempted to switch between pages, make changes, etc. Although more training could probably help with any confusion using the technology, more training requires more time and more money.

2) Switching between pages: The ability to switch between pages and come back to topics discussed earlier that day or earlier in the week is really useful in the classroom. For example, Thursday's lesson was focused on graphing parabolas. Ms. Mathews was able to flip back to a practice problem from earlier in the week on finding the axis of symmetry and vertex and then build on that problem to lead into the new topic. This ability is useful in maintaining an underlying focus and connecting topics.

3) Sharing Interactive Media: Because the focus of the lesson was on graphing parabolas, Mr. Johnson pulled up an interactive image of the classroom calculators and was able to show students how to use their calculators for specific tasks related to graphing. This was probably more effective than explaining purely in words with no visual, especially for students who are more visual learners.

Although these three reasons are advantages when compared to a regular whiteboard, the reality is these three things can all be achieved by the "overhead projectors" that most teachers still have in the classroom. Writing practice problems on transparency sheets ahead of time would save time in the classroom and allow the teachers to return to topics later on; putting the calculator on the projector would allow students to visually see how to graph different parabolas. "Overhead projectors" are nowhere near as fancy or high tech but keeping in mind the needs of this math classroom, they could likely have a similar effect.

That's not to say the SMART Board is useless entirely. There are definitely classrooms in which the unique features of the SMART Board, such as its ability to receive input from multiple computers or its features catered toward collaborative work, can contribute substantially to learning. It's just hard to say that this is one of them.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, I gave a lecture at the Berkman Center with the intentionally provocation title: Personalized Learning, Backpacks Full of Cash, Rockstar Teachers, and MOOC Madness: The Intersection of Technology, Free-Market Ideology, and Media Hype in U.S. Education Reform. Both of the regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the ideas that have been presented here in the past, now linked together in a larger and hopefully more coherent shape. This post has gobs of media for you to enjoy, visualizations, slides, video and my textual notes from the talk. By way of introduction, let me share this fabulous visualization from Willow Brugh.

In the talk, I try to role model the discipline of asking three kinds of questions when examining new forms of education technology or online learning. First, what values or lessons does the structure of the learning environment teach (irrespective of the content in the learning environment)? Second, what's new? To what extent do new technologies merely res-kin old, and sometimes very tired, ideas? Third, what are the second and third order consequences of implementing new learning technologies? If something is a good idea for an individual student in a particular circumstance, does it follow that enabling all individuals in similar circumstances will create a better system?

The talk starts by investigating personalized learning, which I chose as a starting point since that particular buzzword has been celebrated by people with very different ideas of education. I try to ask the three questions above: what values are encoded in systems of personalized learning? what features of personal learning systems are actually new? and what might be the unintended consequences of reorienting educational systems to make the individual the unit of analysis of pedagogy and policy.

The edge of personal learning is very sharp and seductive. Who will intuitive object to a "focus on each individual child." It's easy to see how these ideas might enter established systems. The back of the wedge may prove to be quite thick. I'm interested that this wedge doesn't fracture some of the things we most care about in schools systems. In focusing on children as individuals, can we prevent children from being treated as batches, while still enabling people to learn in communities? That is one of the essential pedagogical and policy question that we face.

Below is the video from the talk, my slides, a Storify of tweets from the event, and my unedited talking notes (which, unfortunately, are a bit sparse in some places where I've simply memorized sections that I've discussed frequently). Enjoy.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My colleague Tracy Sockalosky very kindly shared her recap of the recent Edcamp Boston meeting on May 4. Enjoy, and peruse the #edcampbos hashtag to get a richer sense of the event, or check out some of the other recaps by Chairman Dan Callahan or Emily Looser. Thanks to all of the edcamp organizers out there bringing these events together for teachers. (This is cross posted from Tracy's blog, Learning, Teaching and Technology)

On Sunday night I jumped in on #edchatma. I was still on the extreme passion high from Edcamp Boston and wanted to further the conversations started on Saturday. During the chat, someone asked what made #edcampbos such a special event. I tried to capture it in 140 characters, but it just is not possible. On Monday morning I saw a tweet urging Edcampers to share not just that we learned, but what we learned.

Here are my top five:

1. Student voice is extremely powerful. Edcamp Boston participants had three opportunities to engage in sessions led by students. It was the highlight of the day for me. A group of 5th grade students from Pine Glen Elementary School in Burlington blew me away.

Of course their knowledge and creativity was engaging, but to me it was the thoughtful and eloquent way in which they responded to questions and added their own ideas that I found the most incredible. Ten year olds that handled themselves better than many adults I know! Cramming math facts or force feeding content is not the answer. Letting kids create and explore, then share their knowledge and learning, this is the transformation that needs to occur. Bethany Rogers joined Katrina Kennett again this year after wowing the crowd last year at Edcamp Boston. Erin McGurk’s tweet below shows perfectly the impact Bethany had on the educators in her session.

2. In the midst of the morning schedule build, I was chatting with fellow organizer Liz Davis about the sessions she was putting up. She told me that she had a new name for 21st century learning, “I call it today.” I laughed, but it was not out of humor. I am growing more and more tired of the term as it is continually being used as a term to denote some goal we are striving to reach. We are 13 years into this century. Jobs, skill sets and lifestyle have transitioned, why is it okay for schools and educators to act as if it is understandable that schools and educators have not kept pace? It is unlikely that I will be able to fix this problem in the short term, but at least I can help reposition the lingo. No more 21st Century spoken like it is sometime beyond, it is TODAY. Thank you Liz Davis.

3. There are some amazing teachers out there. We all know that this must be the case, we hear about them and work with many of them, but it is never more clear to me than at an Edcamp, and Edcamp Boston epitomized this belief. An absolutely gorgeous Saturday, and yet more than 200 teachers were building a schedule at 8:30 in the morning with such excitement and passion, it was astounding. And then the wall went up. I often know which sessions I want to go to, but with this wall, I was perplexed. Voting with my feet was not going to solve the problem that I only have two feet and they have to choose. The good news for me was that there were no bad choices. I am still trying to process all the discussions and ideas. The sharing on twitter was incredible, and I was torn whether I should try and jump around. I was happy with my choices, but still wondered what I had missed. Just before the smackdown, I went into one of the session rooms and found this:

- Rumor has it that Steve Guditus was responsible for this board!

4. In the afternoon I had the privilege of hearing a 9th grade student, Sam Mahler, eloquently testify that students should not have to fight to have access to tools that allow them to learn. Sam is both dyslexic and disgraphic, but with the help of the amazing Karen Janowski and incredibly supportive parents, he has learned to use the iPad as a tool to allow him to overcome the challenges that his learning disabilities present, making it possible for him to engage in his education. The quote that most impacted me was when Sam Mahler discussed the impact of taking the iPad away from him for assessments in school. ”I am an A, sometimes a B, student on projects and assignments. I am a C or D student on tests and quizzes…they are keeping me from Harvard.” Wow. How can educational institutions continue to allow this to happen?

5. Learning and sharing is exciting and there is no better form for a teacher than an Edcamp. I work with some incredible teachers in my school; however, all too often when we gather for “professional development” time, our time is distracted by discussions/complaints of a new policy or new initiative. The atmosphere often turns toward pessimism. Not at an Edcamp. I saw this post from Christine DiMicelli and could not agree more.

Edcamps are engaging and enlightening. Edcamps are inspiring and they are thought-provoking. On a clear and beautiful May weekend, dedicated teachers filled the rooms at Microsoft and the atmosphere was electric. Below is what I wrote before heading off to sleep on Sunday.

Hope to see you all at Edcamp BLC in July!

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This is the third post in a series about about Understanding Digital Inequalities, based on a workshop at the American Educational Researchers Association. The first post examined the the evolving Digital Fault Line, and the second post looked at Power, Policy, and Leadership. During this AERA workshop, we held an interactive, collaborative session to surface key themes related to the evolving digital divide (or what I call, the Digital Fault Line with its ever opening and closing divides). As presenters, we committed to producing a "flash publication" this week where we put our collective insights into writing and quickly get them out in the public sphere. In this final post, we report out on our discussions about parents and teachers and some of Mark Chen's thoughts about the Normal and the Marginal. My hope is that for scholars, this provides an opportunity to document and extend our conversations. For practitioners, I hope this provides a more transparent window into how researchers are theorizing the evolving digital divide.

First, I want to share Mark Chen's terrific visual summary of our conversation. It's worth clicking on to see at full size. The main topic areas from our discussion are in blue, and then Mark highlighted our challenges and obstacles in orange and our opportunities and solutions in green. As you can see, digital inequality is a complex space, and the challenges and opportunities are linked in nuanced ways.

"Normal"

Mark recently posted some very provocative thoughts on his own blog about how the "normal" gets framed in discussions of inequality. He draws on his own doctoral research about World of Warcraft gamers to describe how changing technologies empower certain practices and marginalize others—a kind of meta-framing for change that's helpful in thinking about the specific issues of social inequalities. He offers these provocative questions towards the end of his post:

I guess all this is to say that there's a lot more at stake than the simple construct of the "digital divide." Progress always leaves someone behind. Forming and reforming new ways of doing things will always marginalize someone. How as educators do we minimize this as much as possible, and when do we sit back and realize that the costs may not outweigh the benefits? How do we recognize when to intervene and in what ways?

Parents and Teachers

I facilitated a small group that discussed the domains of parents and teachers. If any single theme connected our ideas, it was that we can't think of addressing digital inequalities exclusively at the level of the individual student. As I've written before, if it takes a village to raise a child, you have to teach the village. We discussed both the importance and the lack of intergenerational learning spaces and learning opportunities. We talked about the challenges of teacher training, where the teacher education curriculum is both very difficult to change in most institutions and yet in most programs teachers learn very little about new technologies, and the digital dimensions of social inequalities go unexamined.

We began to brainstorm ideas about design principles for effective interventions that reduce inequalities in digital learning; interventions that don't just create new opportunities but create opportunities in ways that disproportionately benefit the students we most hope to serve. We discussed the importance of having work that is culturally situated and culturally responsive, engages participants in the design of new opportunities for learning, imagines possibilities for intergenerational learning, and ensures that learning opportunities are available in multiple languages and provide multiple access points for entry. These are only a few ideas, but they are beginning of what I think would be a very productive project to categorize the commonalities behind successful efforts to address divides along the digital fault line.

Janet Kolodner, of Georgia Tech and the National Science Foundation, offered some of the final words of our session. She suggested that we stop using one word that comes up frequently in these discussions: intervention. It's a funny word to use in education, with a history (I think) from the psychology literature. People (myself included) use the term to mean an intentional effort to change someone's thinking, behavior or learning, usually in the context of some kind of research study (e.g "the intervention in our experiment was giving child a mainframe computer and a stack of punchcards..."). Janet critiqued the word as both too cold and clinical and too modest. "We don't need interventions; we need innovation."

Many thanks to all of our participants for sharing their time and insight with us, and I look forward to staying in conversation.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm giving a talk on Tuesday May 7 at 12:30 Eastern at the Harvard Law School as part of the Berkman Luncheon Series, which will be livestreamed and recorded. I'll take questions and try to interact by Twitter at #berkman. You are all cordially invited. The link to the event and livestream (and later the recording) is here, and the slides are below as a teaser.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This is the second post in a series about about Understanding Digital Inequalities, based on a workshop at the American Educational Researchers Association. The first post, with a background on the evolving Digital Fault Line, is here. During this AERA workshop, we held an interactive, collaborative session to surface key themes related to the evolving digital divide (or what I call, the Digital Fault Line with its ever opening and closing divides). As presenters, we committed to producing a "flash publication" this week where we put our collective insights into writing and quickly get them out in the public sphere. In this post, we report out on two of our discussions (which were defined by our participants), one about Power, Hegemony, and Reproduction, and a second about Policy and Leadership. My hope is that for scholars, this provides an opportunity to document and extend our conversations. For practitioners, I hope this provides a more transparent window into how researchers are theorizing the evolving digital divide.

Power, Hegemony, and Reproduction

My colleague Netrice Gaskins took the lead in our conversation about Power, Hegemony, and Reproduction and she has a great blog post describing the structure of our whole workshop as well as the details of her group's more focused discussion.

She writes:

One of the issues I talked about in my [opening provocation] is the difference between designing digital media in ways that engage local (Indigenous or "emic") knowledge vs. alien digital conceptions. My group was tasked to discuss ideas about what might enable underrepresented minorities to fully access their personal, or collective power and influence, and to employ that strength when engaging with others, institutions, or society. It's the difference between being digitally literate and feeling a sense of agency - i.e. by producing, re-producing, re-appropriating, or re-deploying technologies. A few sub-themes/issues emerged in my group:

Infrastructure - a pattern of connections that provides for interaction, communication, and progress. The group noted the need for participation of all stakeholders in the design of digital media applications and platforms. This includes settings that are both formal and informal settings, as well as rich (safe) environments (see Bruce Lewenstein).

Communities of Practice - a group formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor (Etienne Wenger, 2006). This includes schools creating partnerships with CoPs, engaging the use of local (Indigenous) knowledge in the participatory design of digital media technology, and engaging CoPs to engage in the design of digital media in ways that are meaningful to them.

Participatory Design - actively involving all stakeholders in the design process in order to help ensure the project meets their needs. The group emphasized resisting technology standards, fostering maker culture (over consumption), modeling production in open-source (universal access), and creating opportunities for underrepresented groups to design from the ground up.

For the full context, see her entire post.

Policy and Leadership

A second group, facilitated by Georgia Tech professor Betsy DiSalvo gathered around interrelated topics of "Policy and Leadership," "Assumptions and Engagement" and "Relevance". The focus of the conversation was on K-12 school policy and leadership with two seasoned teachers talking about their experience in various school systems. One of the concerns was that the leaders at all levels had incorrect assumptions about digital fluency, computational thinking, and who could use and create with digital tools. There was also concern that the leadership did not include professional development of teachers on how to use technology to increase learning rather than just using technology as an add on in the in the classroom.

The group came together with consensus on four critical steps than our need to be taking to move forward in better understanding and ameliorating the digital inequities.

First, increased professional development with district level administrators and school site leadership to help them develop a vision for digital fluency and computational thinking. This vision should emphasize not just the use of technology, but also address the relevance of technology and best practices for using technology to reach learning goals. As part of implementing the vision we discussed the importance of communication with teachers and transparent rational for implementation. The rational includes four levels of digital learning that need to take place to give a comprehensive learning experience that will equal the playing field among our population.

1. Purposeful use of technology for learning
2. Purposeful learning to use technology as informed consumers of technology and information (digital literacy)
3. Purposeful learning to be creators and producers with technology (digital fluency)
4. Purposeful learning to adapt and create computation (computational thinking)

Second, we discussed the importance of marketing and adapting the current digital learning and teaching tools. As a group we are all excited about and have see the potential of the many effective learning tools and strategies for meeting all four levels of digital learning. However, one of the reasons that these tools and strategies are not working is because we do not have effective communication about what works and how to adapt it to different audiences. One important line of research could focus on weeding through the many case studies and tools and finding ways to get the best in the hands of schools to help them build a tool kit and best practices for their teachers. It is important that this work also is adaptable for audiences and for changes in technology. Teacher training will be critical in making this possible.

Third, we recognized that new models need to be continued to be developed because of changes in technology and because few of the current technology learning tools and strategies address disenfranchised groups. If we hope to address digital inequities in the U.S. a focus on being more inclusive to underrepresented minorities, women, and those living in poverty needs to be a the forefront of new educational technology development.

Fourth, we recognize the need for evaluation. Too often the "gee wiz" effect of new technology or creative and fun digital creations take the spotlight when communicating about educational technology and digital learning. In addition to these spotlights we need to conduct and communicate effective and rigorous evaluation of new tools and programs. The groups asked, What works? And in what circumstances and for whom does it work?

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At the American Educational Research Association conference this week, I ran a workshop with colleagues from around the country (Betsy DiSalvo, Mark Chen, Katie Davis, Nettrice Gaskins) on Understanding Digital Inequalities. We spent 90 minutes with scholars from all over the country examining our evolving understanding of the digital divide.

In my opening comments at the workshop, I argued that the "Digital Divide" might be better framed as a "Digital Fault Line," where new inequalities open and close as the landscape of technology and economic inequality shifts beneath us. Understanding the digital divide simply as "equal access to technology" ignores how different cultural and economic groups use technology differently. Betsy DiSalvo, for instance, examines differences in cultural relationships with computation, noting that consuming computation (playing games), producing with computation (blogging, tweeting), and producing computation itself (programming, modding) are experienced by different groups in different ways. Young African-American males are disproportionately likely to be consumers of computation and are underrepresented as producers of computation, and her doctoral work with the Glitch Game Testers represents a promising pathway for addressing these inequities.

The workshop format that we used was an experiment in several ways. Rather than reading papers or giving talks (which was useful when academic conferences were established in the early 20th century, but not so much now), we gave short provocations and then conducted several exercises to crowdsource insights and examine evolving features of the digital divide. We also promised to produce a "flash publication" by week's end, documenting our insights and reflections. So over this weekend and next week, I'll be sharing several pieces written by the workshop team.

As a preface, I wanted to share two excellent recent reports that provide a broader context on our contemporary understanding of economic inequality and educational outcomes.

The first piece is an article by Sean Reardon of Stanford University called The Widening Income Achievement Gap, published in this months Educational Leadership. The article begins: "If we do not find ways to reduce the growing inequality in education outcomes--between the rich and the poor--schools will no longer be the great equalizer we want them to be." In particular, Reardon notes that while racial achievement gaps remain of serious concern, these gaps have decreased over the last six decades, while income-based achievement gaps have widened. These tectonic shifts in our baseline understanding of economic equality frame the shifting divides along the digital fault line.

The second framing piece is an outstanding address recently given by Uri Treisman at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual meeting. Treisman's talk, Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize, is fueled by a deep passion for educational equality, even as his approach is rich in data, analysis, and nuance. Treisman argues that "the accident of birth or the accident of where you live should not be the primary determinant of your educational opportunities." In particular, Treisman provides a detailed analysis of the "American schools are failing" trope, and uses data from international tests like PISA and TIMSS, as well as data from his home state of Texas and other places, to demonstrate that American schools are not fundamentally broken, but that the American system of schooling is fundamentally inequitable.

It's 50 of the best minutes that you can spend to get a detailed examination of educational inequality in American. My favorite line, "Poverty is something we need to work on as citizens. Opportunity to learn is something we need to work on as math educators." The talk is below, and the slides are available here.

Stay tuned next week, and we'll build upon these baseline insights into educational inequality to continue to explore evolving digital fault lines.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

For the past three years, the company that I co-founded, EdTechTeacher, has sponsored Edcamp Boston, one of the best professional development opportunities in New England and part of the Edcamp movement, which has spawned over 250 similar educator-organized events. Our contribution mostly goes towards lunch, t-shirts, and some of the other logistics so that the event can be completely free for educators.

Edcamp Boston organizers Dan Callahan and Tracy Sockalosky asked me to write a short piece about why Tom Daccord and our EdTechTeacher colleagues support Edcamps. An excerpt is below, and the full post is available at the Edcamp Boston blog. Looking forward to a great event!

If you run a professional development consulting firm, here is a troubling fact: when interviewed, teachers report that the number one influence on their teaching practice is other teachers. That means that if you really want to make substantial improvements in the experience of students in classrooms, you have to help teachers have meaningful conversations about pedagogy with one another. If you are an external consultant, you can't do that work alone. You have to build partnerships with teacher leaders that will carry forward the work that you start together. Consultants like EdTechTeacher can kickstart, but ultimately communities of teachers need to lead the way to better practice....

We support Edcamp Boston because we respect, personally and professionally, the leaders of the event. We support Edcamp Boston because many of the participants have been participants in our own workshops and events, and we're excited to support their growth. We support Edcamp Boston because the Edcamp movement represents a hopeful vision for the future of education and teacher professional development.... If people in the Edcamp community are creating more vibrant learning opportunities for educators, we think that can only do good things for our own mission.

So to all the educators gathering at Edcamp Boston on May 4, we hope you have a wonderful day of learning, and hats off to you for investing your time in supporting your colleagues and improving teaching and learning for your students.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"If you had a choice between spending tens of thousands of dollars on a graduate degree in a school of engineering, or spending $250 a month renting a cubicle at the Artisan's Asylum, I would recommend that you choose the cubicle 100 times over. It's not even close. I mean, I guess it's a little rude to say that here at an engineering school that costs tens of thousands of dollars, but I think the experience at the Asylum is much, much more valuable."

And thus did my dear friend Brandon Stafford begin his remarks to my students in the teacher education program at MIT. Brandon runs a small business, RascalMicro (the computer that powers my in-progress programmable dollhouse), from a cubicle in the Artisan's Asylum, a 40,000 square foot warehouse that is the largest makerspace in the world.

Imagine about 150 cubicles in close proximity to one another, with waist high walls that let everyone see everyone else. Occupying those 150 cubicles are entreprenuers, artists, and hobbiests engaged in complex, imaginative endeavors. Their shared fees also support a classroom, a social space, a woodshop, a metalworking shop, and a small chemistry lab.

There is a biker gang that builds and rides tricked out bicycles. There is the first leg of what will be a six-legged robot large enough to transport two people. There is a shop making three-panel whiteboards, with magnets and whiteboard markers suitable for making cartoons.

There is, at any given time, learning flowing through thriving networks. Nearly 50 classes are offered every month or so, and these are only the tip of the iceberg. The Asylum is a social space. Don't know how to use the 3-D frosting printer that uses CAD files to decorate a cake? Just ask. The point of the community isn't just to use the metalworking shop; it's to make sure that everyone can use all of the tools in the metalworking shop.

How, as a society do we measure and quantify these makers? One young man in the Asylum, who seems not to have necessarily found the most success in the K-12 schooling system, has built his own electric motorcycle. Full-sized. Silent. Green. Awesome. He writes in his blog,"Riding a silent electric motorcycle is the closest I have come to flying while not dreaming."

Assuredly, he knows more about engineering than only a tiny, tiny fraction of people applying for college. He's applying for a bachelors program in one of our local state colleges and he's also applying for a masters degree program from the MIT Media Lab, which has no requirements for degree or GREs and is headed by a man without a college diploma. He'll either attend one of the weaker colleges in our state system, or one of the best design and engineering programs in the world. Colleges all over the world recruit and vie for the attention of people who score really highly on the PSAT. How do we get them to pay attention to kids who can build their own street legal transportation?

The New York Times has an article today on Sylvia Todd, an 11 year old girl who is the star of Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show, where she demonstrates how to make circuits, copper pendants, conductive play dough, and other DIY projects. What do other kids make of Sylvia: "Sylvia says most of her classmates either don't know or don't care about her show. 'They think it's boring,' she said. 'They think of me as Sylvia; they don't know the Super-Awesome Sylvia.'

We don't know the super-awesome Sylvia. We don't know her maker colleagues. They aren't on the radar. My 25 students from MIT live 10 minutes from the largest maker space in the world, and none had ever visited and few had heard of it. Colleges don't know how to recruit kids who build their own motorcycles. We don't know how to count learning that can't fit into our course hours and Carnegie units.

If you speak with them, you will hear the passion of the converted, of people who have found a purpose, a community, and home. But most people don't know what to make of the makers.

Understanding the makers isn't actually that expensive. Sylvia's father says they spend maybe $100 a year on components for projects. What it costs to understand the makers, is time. Time to tinker. Time to visit their communities. Time to evaluate their idiosyncratic learning.

In a world where we need fewer people to conduct routine tasks, fewer people to be cogs in the industrial machine, we will need to find more ways to empower young people to chart their own path, to invent their own jobs, to find their own ways to contribute. Young people today won't have a future to walk into. They'll need to make it.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

Posted by Justin Reich at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend