Audrey Watters

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...

I talked with Daniel Barwick on The Mortarboard podcast about Teaching Machines, the history and the future of ed-tech, etc etc.

In April 2017, I was invited to speak on a panel that was part of the inauguration events for University of Mary Washington's new president. It was just a few months after the US inaugurated a new President too, and more folks were beginning to recognize that we were in...

I talked with EDUCAUSE's president John O'Brien about Teaching Machines (and stuff) as part of his "Community Conversations" series. You can watch the video here.

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.

I had a great conversation with Jon Moscow and Pat Sterner for the Ethical Schools podcast: "From Skinner to computer-based education: Can machines teach?"