September 1, 2021

Freedom and Dignity

In this issue of Ahead in the Count, I mount one of my most reliable hobbyhorses: a now decades-long quest to diagnose the queasiness I feel whenever I encounter unabashed boosterism for digital tools in the classroom, and more specifically, asynchronous tools, a distinction that the pandemic has helped us learn. I've written about this topic many times and for many audiences in the last 25 years, and I've found other, much more thoughtful writers on the topic: Jaron Lanier, Nicholas Carr, and Audrey Watters, whose new book, Teaching Machines: A History of Personalized Learning, pre-ordered months ago, hit my doorstep on Friday. And that's what I did this weekend, along with writing a review of it. I've included it here along with a piece I wrote almost two years ago on the problematic relationship between digital instruction tools and dignity.