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2 days ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Neil Selwyn
On February 6th I took part in a panel at Södertörn University discussing ‘the digital backlash’ in education – the growing trend to ban smartphones from schools, prioritise traditional books over screens, and generally roll-back the digitisation strategies of the 2010s. Here is a summary of my opening remarks. **There are certainly many good reasons to curb the digitisation of schools.
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5 days ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Audrey Watters
The Gates Foundation, we learned this week, is backing away from its environmental efforts, slashing staff and funding for projects that sought in part to address global climate change. Bill Gates is "retooling his empire for the Trump era," as The New York Times put it.
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1 week ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Ben Williamson
Share Share on Bluesky Why is Facebook not here? Why is Twitter not here? Share on LinkedIn Permalink Email May 6, 2025 Educational innovations have been presented at large shows since the Great Exhibitions of the nineteenth century. At the Great Expos, national system leaders would display the latest reformatory ideas and statistics of their performance to other government figures and the general public.
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2 weeks ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Nancy Flanagan
Like all educators, I’ve been following the repercussions of the “Dear Colleague” letter the federal government sent to public schools, threatening to cut off funding for schools that dabble in things like human rights and accurate history. The fact that the poor, strapped (snort) Department of Education used some of their evidently dwindling resources to set up a snitch line so parents could rat out teachers and school leaders is telling. Dear Colleague, my ass. More like Big Brother is watching.
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3 weeks ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Neil Selwyn
The promise of ‘labour-saving’ technology is rarely straightforward. While new technologies will often lead to different working conditions, whether or not these equate with better working conditions tends to contestable (especially if we ask the pointed question of ‘better for whom?’).
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4 weeks ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Audrey Watters
If you don't mind, I'd like to return to that other big story that appeared recently in The Atlantic.
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1 month ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Diane Ravitch
The Texas House of Representatives is moving to a vote on vouchers. Governor Greg Abbott has been pushing vouchers for years, but the House legislators have defeated them again and again, even though Republicans have a super-majority in both houses. The votes were provided by a combination of urban Democrats and rural Republicans. The rural Republicans decided that protecting their local public school was more important than pleasing Governor Abbott.
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1 month ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Nancy Flanagan
If you were in the classroom, as I was for well over three decades, you will have had some experience with tracking— ability grouping, or dividing the class into the Bluebirds, the Orioles and the Buzzards at reading time. And you will know that some teachers strongly resist the impulse to sort and label students, while others endorsed the practice of dividing students by their—key word alert!—perceived differences. I taught 7th grade math for two (non-consecutive) years.
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1 month ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Ben Williamson
A neurotechnology company has just released a new headset device that claims to improve “cognitive fitness” by scanning and training users’ brains. The device, called Athena, is being marketed by Muse as enabling customers to “Future-Proof Your Brain”, enhance their “mental fitness”, and is accompanied by an app described as “Your handheld neuroscience lab”.
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1 month ago | 
nepc.colorado.edu | YearBy Year |Neil Selwyn
The past few years have seen various examples of the fully-automated classroom be put into operation, prompting equal amounts of consternation and celebration. One such Arizona charter school opening in 2025 is described as using AI-driven platforms to give students short bursts of personalised ‘core instruction’. This school – ‘Unbound Academy’ – will be fully-online and targeted at fourth to eighth graders.
