I've heard it a lot lately: "Wow, you are writing for a lot of publications now, huh." I heard it from teachers at Educon. I heard it (funnily enough) from Apple after I wrote a lot (of not so nice things). And it's true. Not counting Hack Education, my work appeared in 6 different publications in the month of January.
All the work has been a blessing and a curse. I've long bemoaned the fact that few people were paying enough attention to education technology -- other than to extol the virtue of whatever hot new startup was crowned "disruptive" by Silicon Valley, of course. And so to suddenly to find myself in such high demand has been incredibly gratifying. I know that I offer a very different voice than other writers (either education writers or tech writers) who tend to be -- in turn --uncritical technophiles and naive technophobes.
But even if my ferocity is boundless, my energy is not, and I've had a sense that it's getting more and more fragmented the more and more places I write. There's too much at stake right now for me not to be loud and critical and focused, out at the forefront of all of this technological change, asking all the questions that really need to be asked about why and where we're headed.
As such, I'm making some big shifts in where I work and what I do.
As I've written about before, it's never been particularly easy to me to figure out how to make money and maintain my integrity. I do think that part of that conundrum comes from the many years I spent in academia where -- for better or worse -- we're indoctrinated with the notion that "the mission" matters more than "the money." And you know what, I really do believe that: I'd rather be poor and radical than rich and complacent. I'd rather be a thorn in the side of the powerful players than shut up, smile and play their game. I'd rather piss everyone off in the course of my work than suck up to those with deep pockets and long tentacles. That being said, there are trade-offs to be made with this stance, and I must focus on what matters: the future of open education, the future of open technologies, and the future of the open Web.
So here are the projects that I'm prioritizing:
1. Hack Education
2. Data and analytics
3. Web and computer literacy for everyone
4. Hackathons as/for education
What that looks like in practice:
You'll find me writing more on Hack Education in lieu of other ed-tech blogs, thanks in no small part to a new project I'm undertaking for Mozilla. It's a project (no surprise) that ties in to #3 -- Web literacy for everyone. More details coming soon.
I'll be writing more for O'Reilly Radar too. I've been working as one of the organization's data correspondents for a while now, but as the interest and innovation continues in "big data," there's an increasing demand for my work there. Intellectually, this work is a real challenge for me as my background is neither in engineering nor statistics. But I love it nonetheless -- not just because it makes my brain bleed. It's because I feel as though battle for control of data and analytics will be one of the most important ones we face in coming years, and I'm glad to do so under the O'Reilly Media umbrella, a publication that I trust for pushing technology forward thoughtfully and equitably.
I'll be traveling more with Kin Lane too, and his work as the API Evangelist is taking him to a bunch of hackathons. Me, I stand on the sidelines noting the absence of women and the absence of real problem-solving. I've long been tracking on a variety of hackathon models -- Startup Weekend, for example -- but there are a lot of reasons why what we're doing in the hackathon space right now doesn't feel quite right. How can we bring more people -- including problem owners and real problem solvers -- to the table? How can we make sure we're not just trying to replicate Silicon Valley (for better or worse) in other locales?
Stay tuned...
Photo credits: Antonio Picascia
