It’s April, cats and kittens, and that means that for many of us, conference season is quickly approaching. We are paying fees and drafting papers and reminding ourselves of where we’re committed to and when and then panicking about conflicts. Or at least, that’s my usual April. Not so much this year. Most of the […]
Category: Work
Speaking Notes: On Machine Learning and Academic Integrity to the Learning Continuity Working Group
What follows are the remarks I presented today to a working group of British Columbia’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future skills. This group brings together the Vice-Presidents Academic (or designate) for the colleges and universities across BC. Thank you for the invitation to speak today. For our team, this is wonderful timing, as we’ve […]
The Kind Face of EdTech’s Bullshit
There’s a poster in my office on campus that means a lot to me — I’ve been out of the office for some time, obviously, but coming back today I was struck by it. Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead people to join you. Ruth […]
Learning Analytics and the Outsourcing of Teacherly Judgement
Who does our thinking for us as teachers? Increasingly, it seems like both educational technology companies and our own administrators are interested in outsourcing the judgement part of our teaching to algorithms. I have written about these algorithms before, and my most significant concern with them is this notion of outsourcing something which is, for […]
“Pedagogy Before Technology” Is a Thought-Terminating Cliché
We can and must do better. I am going to start this post by pointing you to someone brighter, smarter, and more coherent today, because Tim Fawns theorizes everything I am about to rant about in his thoughtful “An Entangled Pedagogy.” Honestly, you can read Tim and skip the rest of what I have to […]
Five Conversations About Education I Would Rather Eat Glass Than Continue Having
One. Laptop / phone / technology bans. This conversation happens on Twitter a minimum of three times a year and every single iteration goes exactly the same way. Someone says they want to ban laptops in their class because, I don’t know, attention. Someone else (rightly) says, hm, seems ableist. Then the first person says, […]
Technology Entrepreneurs Cannot Be Allowed to Drive Education
I feel like the title here is self-evident, and yet we keep seeming to circle back to having to learn it over again. Today’s absurdist example is the guy who invented the Oculus (the VR headset thing) who seems to think people would want a VR headset that literally, actually kills you if you die […]
Podcasting Lessons Learned
This week at my day job, we restarted our popular open course on podcasting. (There’s still time to join, by the way, and you can register on our site.) In addition, I recently finally had the chance to listen “A Harem of Computers,” which is a new CBC Ideas radio documentary co-produced by a graduate […]
The Teacherly Ego
There’s not much I have supreme confidence in. I think of myself as basically competent but not expert in lots of areas and decent at my job really just because I am comfortable facilitating the transfer of knowledge about teaching and learning. So listen when I tell you: I am freaking great at lecturing. And […]
You’re Doing It Wrong versus Safe Places to Fall
Last week, before I found my way back to the land of the living, there was post on Times Higher Education about ungrading. Even in my shocked, grief-addled space, it found its way to me. Nothign like a tablespoon of rageful hate-reading to cut through the fog of mourning. Anyway. Ungrading is a way of […]