I was interviewed for this story about the bleak state of "academic freedom" in Texas universities and how AI is making things worse. Great reporting from Jessica Priest at the Texas Tribune. www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

People who designed the common core who attribute this to a misinterpretation of the project are not unbelievably naive—they’re just lying to you

an article two friends and my mom sent me before 8 this morning— www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...

“The future they’re selling has not arrived — and perhaps it never will. But the de-skilling, surveillance, and extraction — all of that is happening now, in our classrooms, today.”

“Automating these processes doesn’t “free” teachers; it unmoors them from the core of their professional practice.”

ICYMI

Teach like a Luddite! In which I join @philnichols.bsky.social and @anterobot.bsky.social to argue for a Luddite praxis in education grounded in three elements: embracing strategic playfulness; developing localized tactics; and building networks of resistance. Read the article at Kappan:

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Something I’ve encountered a lot lately is misperception of Luddites as technophobic reactionaries motivated by ignorance & resentment, rather than what they were, part of a well-informed labor movement seeking to seize control of means of production.

Teachers—university and K-12—don’t have to capitulate to this. When a technology is antithetical to learning, when it erodes our collective capacity to know and teach our students, then it is irredeemably miseducative and we should reject it. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Had a lot of fun writing this review of @tomcomitta.bsky.social’s strange, moving, and hilarious book. Gets us to think, as I argue here, about the value of an aesthetic education—something we all should aim for as we teach our kids. mid-theory.com/2025/12/04/u...

So honored that our article “Speculative Capture: Literacy after Platformization,” co-authored with @philnichols.bsky.social, @quirosjulian.bsky.social, and @ezekieldixonroman.bsky.social received the 2025 Arthur Applebee Award at the Literacy Research Association! Check it out open access!

Many congrats to Dr. @philnichols.bsky.social and team for receiving the 2025 Arthur Applebee Award at the Literacy Research Association conference! You can read the winning article here (ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) #literacies

Gift link to my argument in favor of teaching works of "serious literary value" in public schools: slate.com/life/2025/05...

it's not good for kids to read books because it will prepare them for college, or for work, or for seminary, it's good for them in the moment because it helps them grow, in any number of unpredictable directions

Good distillation of what I argue in Building the Innovation School—the imperative to "innovate" in K-12 education is a mechanism to recurrently launder austerity and/or public resource capture as common-sense, even equitable, reform. bookshop.org/p/books/buil...

Just learned that WRITING BACKWARDS has won Narrative's 2026 Perkins Prize, "awarded to the book making the most significant contribution to the study of narrative in a given year." A true honor, especially given the prize's past recipients! www.thenarrativesociety.org/barbara-and-...

Hey high school English teachers! If you are going to @ncte.org 's convention next month, please be in touch! @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with ed prof pals Robert LeBlanc and @philnichols.bsky.social, will be presenting and leading a workshop on Saturday, 11/22

. @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I put CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY together to help connect what undergrads do in assignments with what we do as scholars then we found ourselves talking to a lot of high school teachers slate.com/life/2025/10...

Seems like an opportune moment to re-up our paper about AWS seeking infrastructural dominance in education through a range of operations that include platforming the edtech industry on its cloud services codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2022/07/12/h...

in which i compare chatgpt to humbert humbert

This is just as true for K-12, and if you're looking to cut through the hype in your local school/district, Faith Boninger and I wrote this brief to sum up the research evidence (or lack thereof) for school leaders, administrators, and policymakers. Send it to them! nepc.colorado.edu/publication/...

New paper - "Brokering the brain: neuroscientific knowledge, technologies, and the translation of neuro-expertise into educational practice" - led by @dimiktz.bsky.social w Martyn Pickersgill, Jess Pykett and me from our bio-edu-data-sci project funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk doi.org/10.1080/0159...

I wrote about the divide between high school and college English, and what we might do to bridge it, for @publicbooks.bsky.social—part of an excellent roundtable on higher ed under Trump organized by @dennismhogan.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/toward-the-h...

Maybe of interest to the @civicsoftech.bsky.social and #literacies communities and others concerned about the growing influence of private tech in public schools.

Say it often, say it loud: "Overall, research has not supported the common-sense presumption that digital approaches to schooling are better than non-digital alternatives. At the broadest level, widespread computer use in education has been found to be associated with lower student achievement."

[clears throat]...I have another book coming out in the near future if you'd like to read a bit about LYRIC LOGIC, there are some very generous blurbs over at @columbiaup.bsky.social (my thanks to Marjorie Levinson, Oren Izenberg, Theo Davis, Nan Z. Da, and also @philipleventhal.bsky.social)

Edtech platforms "are not neutral 'tools' but complex ecosystems shaped by technical architectures, commercial imperatives, and political-economic interests." Excellent new policy brief on edtech platforms from @nepc.bsky.social and @philnichols.bsky.social

New @nepc.bsky.social policy brief with Faith Boninger: how commercial edtech undercuts key goals of public education—and what we can do about it. We look at transparency, governance, and privacy issues and offer recommendations for educators and policymakers. nepc.colorado.edu/publication/...

If you care about young people, education, and the future, this report from @nepc.bsky.social is a must read.

New policy brief: Educators should reassess the hidden impacts of ed tech ecosystems on teaching, learning, and student data. bit.ly/46C2JXT

New @nepc.bsky.social policy brief with Faith Boninger: how commercial edtech undercuts key goals of public education—and what we can do about it. We look at transparency, governance, and privacy issues and offer recommendations for educators and policymakers. nepc.colorado.edu/publication/...

📚New Pub! Contributing to our special issue series, Dominique McDaniel and Matthew Osborn write “From Platforms to Pedagogy: Exploring How Youth’s Social Media Practices Can Shape Teacher Education Through Culturally Digitized Pedagogy.” Check it out!

The final issue of our series on critical perspectives on digital platforms in ELA teacher education is published. We are so grateful to all of our brilliant contributors. Check it out!

📚New Pub! Contributing to our special issue series, @justmaybechris.bsky.social, Cherise McBride, and @anna-phd.bsky.social write on “The (Im)Possibilities of ‘Creating Digital Living Rooms’: A Black Educational Studies Perspective on Digital Platforms in Teacher Education”. Check it out!

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

Tonight in Critical Tech in Ed, we're reading @anterobot.bsky.social, @charleswlogan.bsky.social & @philnichols.bsky.social's LA Book Review on @bcmerchant.bsky.social's Blood in the Machine to talk abt why we're reading widely & critically in seeking to understand tech in edu & advocate for change.

I've been working for many months on this article on Silicon Valley's under-the-radar role in bringing AI into schools across the US. I really hope you'll read it — here's a gift link — but I'll tell you some of the highlights in this thread. (1/x)

Writing with @philnichols.bsky.social and @anterobot.bsky.social, we consider what three waves of Luddites throughout history have to offer educators in the fight against generative AI and other obnoxious machines of automation. The article is paywalled, but I'm happy to send a copy.

I can’t tell what gives me more hope: @andyliddell.bsky.social and Julie’s work at the EdTech Law Center; or Celeste, a high school students’, brilliant engagement with their work in this week’s @civicsoftech.bsky.social blog.

New pub! This collaboration with @neilgshanks.bsky.social and @lizmagill.bsky.social was driven by a shared desire to imagine economic inquiry that draws from students’ lives and experiences and disrupts the patriarchal assumptions in the neoclassical paradigm. Share with social studies teachers!

What do young people have to contribute to conversations about digital civic life? Check out this @civicsoftech.bsky.social blog from Digital Civics Club student, Athena! If you care to show support to this young writer in her first publication, leave a comment on the blog!

I’ve been engaging in digital civic inquiry with these brilliant young people for three years now, and I never want to stop! We’ve gotten to learn from and lean on each other during times when we need community and hope. Here are some insights from the experience…

What does it look like to do critical tech studies with high school students? @alliethrall.bsky.social, @philnichols.bsky.social, and Kevin Magill share their exciting project in today's Newsletter. www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/introdu...

OpenAI is now in your LMS and Trump's mandating "non-ideological" AI literacy. Here's an updated list of critical research on AI in education to make sense of it all.

Could edtech and AI in education be imagined otherwise? In our paper in latest issue of Oxford Review of Education @arathings.bsky.social, Carolina Valladares Celis, Jessica Pykett, @kerifacer.bsky.social and I surface four alternative orientations to tech in education (1/2) doi.org/10.1080/0305...

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Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, and Possibilities—edited by me and @anterobot.bsky.social—is out today! 🎉 It's been an absolute privilege to work with so many brilliant people, over multiple years, to make this book a reality. www.routledge.com/Literacies-i...

Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, and Possibilities—edited by me and @anterobot.bsky.social—is out today! 🎉 It's been an absolute privilege to work with so many brilliant people, over multiple years, to make this book a reality. www.routledge.com/Literacies-i...