A guide to computational thinking education, with a focus on artificial intelligence literacy and the integration of computing and physical objects. Computing has become an essential part of today's primary and secondary school curricula. In recent years, K–12 computer education has shifted from computer science itself to the broader perspective of computational thinking (CT), which is les…
The work of environmental educators and activists in India and South Africa offers new models for schooling and environmental activism. Education has never played as critical a role in determining humanity's future as it does in the Anthropocene, an era marked by humankind's unprecedented control over the natural environment. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic project among schools and act…
An investigation of the role of educational privatization and technology in the crises of truth and agency. Today, conspiracy theories run rampant, attacks on facts have become commonplace, and systemic inequities are on the rise as individual and collective agency unravels. The Alienation of Fact explains the educational, technological, and ideological preconditions for these contemporary c…
Behind the lectern stands the professor, deploying course management systems, online quizzes, wireless clickers, PowerPoint slides, podcasts, and plagiarism-detection software. In the seats are the students, armed with smartphones, laptops, tablets, music players, and social networking. Although these two forces seem poised to do battle with each other, they are really both taking part in a war…
A speculative framework that imagines how we can use education data to promote play, creativity, and social justice over normativity and conformity. Educational analytics tend toward aggregation, asking what a “normative” learner does. In The Left Hand of Data, educational researchers Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia start from a different assumption—that outliers are, and must be tre…
An imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose. What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative missio…
How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or les…
How lessons from kindergarten can help everyone develop the creative thinking skills needed to thrive in today's society. In kindergartens these days, children spend more time with math worksheets and phonics flashcards than building blocks and finger paint. Kindergarten is becoming more like the rest of school. In Lifelong Kindergarten , learning expert Mitchel Resnick argues for exactly the …
The intellectual heritage of MIT: an account of "the flow of ideas" about science and education that shaped the Institute as it emerged and that inspires it today. The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens et Manus"--"mind and hand"--signals the Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called "the most earnest cooperation of intelligent cu…
"Millions of children visit virtual worlds every day. In such virtual play spaces as Habbo Hotel, Toontown, and Whyville, kids chat with friends from school, meet new people, construct avatars, and earn and spend virtual currency. In 'Connected Play', Yasmin Kafai and Deborah Fields investigate what happens when kids play in virtual worlds, how this matters for their offline lives, and what thi…