Articles
Writing about educational technology, learning design, and the questions that sit underneath both. Articles are organized into three threads: Tools & Power examines the economics and politics of EdTech, Other Lenses draws on speculative fiction, natural systems, and contemplative practice to think differently about design, and Design Practice covers the day-to-day work of building learning experiences that hold up in real conditions.
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Dear L&D: Your Learning Platform Has a Point of View (Published on Training Industry)
My letter “Dear L&D: Your Learning Platform Has a Point of View” is now up on Training Industry as part of their Dear L&D series, where people in the field write directly…
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Leaving the Back Open
Part 10 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. When Spearfish School District started using the Danielson walkthrough tool I’d built, the first thing they did was ask for changes.…
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Simple Tools That Run Offline, and When to Build Them
Part 9 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. A course module arrives as a Word document. A subject matter expert wrote it, and it’s good: objectives at the top,…
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Research-Based Is Not a Purpose
The phrase shows up in a predictable spot. A district is deciding whether to adopt a reading program, a behavior framework, or a platform, and somewhere in the second half of the…
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Using Less AI in DIY EdTech
Part 8 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. When I started building AI-powered tools for education, my instinct was the same one most people have: send the user’s question…
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The Difference Between a Game and a Badge
Canvas has a badge feature. If I want to, I can open the settings for a course, attach a requirement to a module, and have the system hand out a small image…
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The Learner Who Shows Up in Week Four
Every cohort has one. Somebody emails in week four asking if it’s too late to join, or logs in for the first time after three weeks of silence because a building crisis…
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An Ethos With a Changelog
Part 7 of an ongoing series on vibe coding in EdTech. Nobody asks a vendor what they believe about teaching. Procurement asks about seat cost, data handling, integration with the student information…
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Trying a Post-Digital Lens
Most of the language we use to talk about technology in education assumes a line between the digital and everything else. We talk about technology integration, as if the technology arrives from…
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Teaching Realism
I’ve been noticing something in the way AI tools market themselves to educators. The pitch varies in specifics, but the underlying structure is almost always the same: teachers are overwhelmed, teachers are…
