The author identifies areas for skepticism about ed. tech research:
MONEY-DRIVEN RESEARCH.
LACK OF CONSENSUS.
PUBLICATION REPUTABILITY
AUTHOR TIMIDITY AND PRAGMATISM.
Making ed tech decisions based on "best guesses," Richard Rhodes advocates, strikes me as a pretty weak recipe. I'm not saying that a healthy amount of skepticism isn't required, but Rhodes seems to have a bone to pick with experts of any kind.
Brian Lukoff, a Technology & Education Postdoc Fellow working with Eric Mazur, just sent me this article which discusses their new ed tech startup Learning Catalytics. It's the evolution of the Eric's clicker supported Peer Instruction. I'm meeting with Brian and Eric on Tuesday to setup a TIE spring internship doing business development for Learning Catalytics.
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS are the science equivalent of Common Core. They are supposed to be released this coming Winter/Spring. Possibly a good opportunity for TIE and other HGSE master's students to get on top of the ed tech game!
Duncan pushes technology verbally, but does not act on the national ed tech plan and has eliminated funding for technology. This is bad reporting by someone who does not understand the subject and does not ask tough questions
Let's not forget the hand that Professional Development offerings, or lack there of, around Ed Tech played in this "failure," too. Just because we put a Smart or Promethean board in every school doesn't mean that it won't get written on with a dry erase marker or used only as an LCD projector instead of as the interactive device that it was designed to be...teacher training is essential in the success of ed tech integration.
Kind of ironic, but "old tech" using new tech to promote sales of old tech. Basically Elsevier is giving students in an edX course a free, static version of one of its textbooks. Students then see a link to purchase a discounted, dynamic version--and it seemed to bump up sales!
Also interesting is that edX gets a cut of the book sales--maybe another avenue for them to become sustainable, in addition to charging for certification.