re: The State of the Education Blogosphere

Stephen Downes — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:41:31 GMT

> “a problem as I see it is that there are very few nodes connecting the unfortunately and unnecessarily distinct networks (i.e. the ed. tech. networks and the ed. policy networks).”

I read many of the ed policy blogs, and sometimes link to them (though mostly on 'Half an Hour', more rarely on OLDaily).

There are very good reasons why the ed policy blogs and the ed tech blogs do not intermix:

- the ed policy blogs are almost uniformly devoted specifically to U.S. politics, while the ed tech blogs form a very international community

- the ed tech policy blogs represent for the most part a political perspective characteristic of American conservatism, a perspective that is unique to a small mostly self-contained cluster, which neither reads nor links outside the cluster (link rank is very important to them) and which is not represented at all internationally

- the ed tech policy blogs represent a perspective on education (and in particular, things like testing and curricula) that is repugnant to the majority of ed tech bloggers, whose views on education are probably best classed as 'progressive'

- the ed tech policy blogs employ a 'research' methodology that is generally considered fraudulent by the wider community

re: The State of the Education Blogosphere

lajones — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:48:23 GMT

Thanks for the post!

I appreciate your interest in your subject, K-12 Computer Science. As you may remember, mine is K-12 math, but I think this article has some interesting ideas for improving instruction in all subjects.

"Perhaps the most profound opportunity within a digital mathematics curriculum lies in its potential to disrupt the textbook-adoption cycle, enabling us to follow the mathematics panel’s second call, “learning as we go along,” and, in particular, to support a continuous-improvement, adopt-and-adapt cycle."

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/05/07/36patton.h27.html?tmp=1360151410