Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Monday night I had the pleasure of attending the Creative Commons SF Salon on using openness in education. (You can see the video and read about the event here.) While the panelists were all great, the biggest audience reaction of the … Continue reading →

This is the time of year when we get to read commencement speeches, commentary on commencement speeches, commentary on the commentary on commencement speeches, and so on into recursive bliss. There tends to be a great deal of focus on … Continue reading →

This past weekend I took my kids to the Maker Faire for the second year in a row. The energy — of both the innovative and electrical varieties — was almost painfully intense. There was a raw excitement everywhere, coupled … Continue reading →

In a previous post I started thinking about the economics of online content. In that post I talked about the “public goods problem;” in this post I’ll examine the issue of market structure and its implications for the profitability of … Continue reading →

Yesterday the New York Times had two op-eds on education reform. One, by Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari, argued for paying teachers more. The other, by R. Barker Bausell, argued for better monitoring of teachers to ensure higher quality, perhaps … Continue reading →

Which kind of organizational structure is better for transforming education: a non-profit model dedicated entirely to the mission of change, or a for-profit model with serious financial backing? At a recent Stanford/MIT VLAB event, Sal Khan of Khan Academy and … Continue reading →

Having been in the education technology industry for six years, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the major players. But in the past week of active searching, I’ve found a number of great and interesting sites, from … Continue reading →

In a recent Planet Money podcast, Alex Blumberg and David Kestenbaum performed a brilliant economic analysis of the recent political controversy over public funding for NPR. Much of their discussion revolves around the concept of a public good: something like public radio … Continue reading →

Whenever I talk to anyone about microeducation, Khan Academy inevitably comes up. Sal Khan’s work is a great inspiration to all of us in education technology, and his videos in particular are perfect examples of the kind of microeducation artifacts … Continue reading →

Key to the concept of microeducation is the prefix micro. As an economist, I associate micro with the notion of individuals and firms, as well as interactions between individuals and firms, rather than the study of larger economic systems. Microeducation, in … Continue reading →