Audrey Watters

I'm still struggling to write regularly, although I have lots of notes jotted down with half-baked ideas for essays and research projects (and possibly even book proposals). That said, I am reading a ton, and as I view that input as refueling my intellectual reserves, I'm trying not to freak...

It's a holiday here in the US, but no one I know is celebrating. But I'm a little shocked by how many people are pronouncing that now they're unhappy with this country and can't stomach any sort of rituals about our so-called "independence." As my friend and yoga teacher Margarita...

This was past week was One of Those Weeks — a week that culminated on Friday, of course, with the US Supreme Court rescinding the equal rights of half the people in this country, with an eye to undo even more. I've been numb with grief and anger ever since....

It was mid-morning when we started our ascent up Kerby Peak. We were alone — or at least there were no other cars parked at the trailhead. It had rained quite a bit the day before, and even though it was a weekend, I was thankful that the wet weather...

I'm going to get back in the habit of updating this site (at least) weekly — ya know, blogging. But rather than the type of "week in review" that I've written in the past — either here or on the now-defunct Hack Education — I thought I'd steal some of...

I posted a "goodbye" over on Hack Education this morning. I won't be updating that site any longer; I won't be working in or (hopefully) even adjacent to ed-tech any more. I want to write about other things, but as long as I cling to the "ed-tech's Cassandra" identity, it's...

The past few months have been hard; April, May, and June will be hard for the rest of my life. Mid-April marked two years since I last saw Isaiah alive. Mid-May marked two years since his death. Mothers' Day falls somewhere in there, of course, and then there's his birthday...

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...

Yesterday morning, I ran my first 5K race. It was my first race ever. It was, as a matter of fact, the first time in my life I've participated in any sort of athletic competition. I never played competitive sports as a kid — neither on a team nor as...