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Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning

Audrey Watters, (MIT Press 2021)

Justin Reich has reviewed Teaching Machines in the History of Education Quarterly (and said some very nice things about me and about the book): Teaching Machines arrives in a world where the pandemic has made education 148 technology seem simultaneously more essential and more fallible. Distance learning, 149 as millions...

Joshua Kim has reviewed Teaching Machines in his column on Inside Higher Ed: In Teaching Machines, Watters has provided a sturdy historical foundation for her long-running (and highly influential) skepticism of the efficacy of most educational technologies. Teaching Machines is a book, and Watters is a scholar, that both deserve...

Audrey Watters is a prophet. Prophets aren’t fortune tellers, however. The main business of prophets, even in the Bible, isn’t the future. It’s the present. Better to say: it’s the set of possible futures that are liable to follow from crucial choices made in the present. Israel’s prophets brought a...

A huge thank you to Charles Logan, Autumm Caines, and Dan Krutka for creating a reading guide for Teaching Machines. Charles Logan has written a blog post, explaining the project, which includes an inquiry design model lesson plan.

Bonni Stachowiak had me as a guest on her terrific podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed, where we talked about behaviorism, dog training, and of course, Teaching Machines. Have a listen here. If we have a better understanding of the history of educational technology, there is hope.