This post first appeared on aud.life
I get it. I do. I worked briefly as a tech blogger, and I understand that the job often requires you publish multiple stories a day (it was between 4 to 6 in my case), for which you’re paid piecemeal. There’s not a lot of time to do research. There’s not a lot of time to cultivate or interview sources. There’s not a lot of time to identify independent experts and get them to weigh in with a helpful quote or two. There’s not a lot of time, and there’s not a lot of incentive. Indeed, as tech journalism is largely “access journalism,” you’re better off not asking too many tough questions. So you simply rewrite press releases. Or you repeat the stories that the marketing person and CEO tell you. Or you rewrite stories that other sites have published.
From the last week alone:
Edsurge claimed to have the “exclusive” on a new White House initiative, the “Open eBooks” app. The article claimed these were open educational resources. They’re not, despite that adjective “open.” It wasn’t an exclusive story either, for what it’s worth. (Correction on the OER angle issued. Story still boasts “exclusive.”)
In another story, Edsurge reported that if you tweet with the hashtag #participatelearning, you can submit OER to the Learning Registry. A bit of digging raises a lot of questions about whether or not this is actually possible (or actually happening) and why the company running this campaign, Participate Learning, would require participants to authorize a Twitter app that, among other things, allows the app to update their profile information and harvest their email address. (No correction or update issued.)
In another story, Edsurge claimed that Nearpod now offers the “first publicly available virtual reality (VR) tool for schools.” It isn’t. There’s a long history of VR in education. (No correction or update issued.)
In another story, Edsurge reported that Google had launched a “safe search” engine for kids. It didn’t. The site in question, Kiddle.co, is run by the Russian founder of the site freakingnews.com, if that gives you any idea of how well the content will be curated. For lulz: search for “Moby Dick” on Kiddle.co. (Correction about Google’s non-ownership issued. No details on the actual owner or on the problems with the site.)
It’s not just a problem at Edsurge, of course, although that site has tried to position itself as the leading news source for education technology and so this list of errors from just one week's worth of stories is pretty troubling.
Can we please raise the bar on ed-tech journalism? Please? Can we not adopt the model that tech blogging has taken, churning out an endless stream of emptiness where all products are amazing, where all entrepreneurs are heroic innovators, where every press release is regurgitated without any skeptical or critical eye? I realize that venture capitalists have invested heavily in that model, but it hasn’t helped make entrepreneurs or consumers or, hell, investors themselves any smarter or better informed about tech, now has it?