EduGeek Journal

All I can say is that I knew it all along. Jacqueline Barnes of Litmos LMS says that “our brains love learning online.” Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that research is possibly indicating that certain aspects of the online experience help us to enjoy the learning process a bit more. [...]

This morning I was pondering what impact Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) would have on the overall landscape of education. Most people involved in education that I speak to haven’t even heard of them. Many people (myself included) drop out of them before they really get started. So the question we have to wonder is: [...]

Over the weekend I had a conversation with a friend about online learning.  It turns out he has taken several online courses over the past few years.  He had an interesting statement that I think many in online education need to pay attention to: “I have gotten to where I don’t need to read the [...]

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from my years spent in pursuit of a Bachelor’s in Education was really quite simple yet profound: “don’t let your class or syllabus get in the way of learning.”  Some of you might have heard of it also referred to as the K.I.S.S. (Keep It [...]

One of my few pet peeves are people that state the obvious as if it were some kind of new revelation. Or even worse yet, try to make an entire theory or standard based off on something that should be obvious to everyone.  Recently in Ed Tech circles, an obvious statement has been making the [...]

I’m pretty sure that if you care about actual learning, you have run in to the same problem I have: going to check out the latest award-winning course, program, idea, etc and then coming to the inevitable conclusion that it is pretty much junk.  Some educational awards and accolades do go to great projects… but [...]

Been out for a bit to help welcome a new EduGeek in the world.  I come back hoping to find a great new world of Ed Tech, grown and matured since I last left it.  Instead, I find the same silliness, like this article in the New York Times: Second Thoughts on Online Education You [...]

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Here is the name of a recent article on The Chronicle: College 2.0: Teachers Without Technology Strike Back The first thing that any decent intro to educational technology course teaches you is that technology is not just a computer.  Chalk boards are technology.  Books are technology.  “Technology can [...]

This quote nails a thought I have been having on the head.  Sherry Turkle quoted by Net Gen Skeptic from an interview with Digital Nation: “I don’t really care what technology wants. It’s up to people to develop technologies, see what affordances the technology has. Very often these affordances tap into our vulnerabilities. I would [...]

The Chronicle boldly proclaimed today that “Online Learning May Slightly Hurt Student Performance.” How do they know this? A “study found that students who watched lectures online instead of attending in-person classes performed slightly worse in the course over all.” That sound you hear is the collective world of EduGeeks around the world firmly planting [...]