I finished two books this weekend!

The first, “Failure to Disrupt” by Justin Reich took me quite a while to read but what a pleasure! If it were an education textbook it would be the best one I have read. It is a book I have been meaning to read ever since I started listening to the TeachLab podcast which did a “book club” on it. If you are interested in educational technology I cannot recommend it highly enough but if you just want a review and some sparky-notes (I should have actually taken notes but didn’t so this is all from memory) here is what I got out of it:

• Technology can, has, and will continue to incrementally improve education.
• Great education happens between people meaning that the best use of technology in education is often as a tool to widen and tighten a network of teachers and learners.
• MOOCs are not going to replace schools any more than the radio did (and a lot of people thought radio would replace schools or at least teachers).
• In fact, technology is very unlikely to “disrupt” education.
• Educational technology is plagued by “the Matthew effect” (i.e. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer). Even “free” educational technology often requires expensive tools (ipads, internet, laptops, etc.) and therefore is more likely to serve already well-served students.
• The results of research on MOOCs is
  • “students who do more, learn more, do better, get better grades”
  • People who are good at school (i.e. have 2+ degrees) do great on MOOCs everyone else, not so much
  • Most, 95%+, of people who start a MOOC give up after 3 lectures

I have a few critiques:

• The book is insufficiently critical of the inhumanity of autograding. I have seen many students reduced to tears because of them
• LMS systems are universally atrocious in design and deserve more hate/s

I had planned to do a more in depth review of “Failure to Disrupt” but life gets in the way of such things sometimes.

The second book I read was “Unapologetically Dope” by A. Nicki Washington, PHD. I made it through this one in about 90 minutes. Partly because it is relatively short and mostly because it’s easy to read and pretty engaging.

“Unapolgetically Dope” didn’t do much for me personally, as a 30 year old white man who has already done fine in tech but it was emphatically not written for me and I could definitely see myself recommending it to students. It is clearly written with love and filled with solid advice for anyone. Plus the autobiographical bits that the author includes paint an inspiring picture of a successful and dope black woman in tech.

My only critique is that I kind of wish it came with a workbook, checklist, or similar. Such a tool could be useful for students reading it. Maybe it’s unnecessary.