ZDNet Education

Christopher Dawson

Review:ed with Edukwest's Kirsten Winkler and ZDNet's Chris Dawson

By Christopher Dawson | January 10, 2012, 12:31am PST

I had the pleasure of wrapping up 2011 as a guest on review:ed, a weekly show with Kirsten Winkler who runs the Edukwest site and spends even more time thinking about ed tech and its disruptive potential in our schools than I do. The first week of 2012 saw an invite to do another review:ed episode with Kirsten. We had a great time (stick two ed tech geeks on Skype for an hour and let them talk about the developments of the week and, chances are, at least they’re going to have a good time) and Kirsten was kind enough to ask me to become her co-host. Obviously I said yes!

So I’ll be posting our weekly videos on this page from now on and linking here from ZDNet Education when the videos deserve a followup post. Check back every Monday for a new episode or just use the links below to subscribe via RSS or iTunes:

review:ed #20: It’s iPad Day

Show Notes

[05:20] TED launched TED-Ed Channel on YouTube
Source: The Verge

[10:05] McGraw-Hill sees $399 price of iPad 2 as tipping point
Source: The Verge

[13:39] Interview with Adam Garry of Dell

[27:05] Thank you to our sponsor Transfluent

[31:15] Discussing the new iPad

[39:50] Khan Academy App
Source: ZDNet

[44:50] Students don’t ask their parents or teachers anymore
Source: Big Think

[51:15] France planning an “Amazon tax” to save small bookstores

[56:50] Encyclopedia Britannica stops the print edition
Source: KirstenWinkler.com

[1:02:09] Luidia Tech Adoption Study
Source: ZDNet

[1:07:56] Thank you to our sponsor StudyBlue

[1:15:13] Critical Links Education Appliance now eligible for E-Rate

review:ed #19 Interview with Jason Perlow

(Editor’s note - it was a bad day for Skype, recording, and all things tech…so we have this great interview with Jason and, maybe someday, we’ll salvage some more footage and get it online.)

review:ed #18 This is going to be a short Episode

(Editor’s note - this title is a bit ironic. It wasn’t)

review:ed #17 Begun the E-Textbook War has

Show Notes

[02:45] Kno sues Cengage Learning for pulling its textbooks
Source: Mashable

[11:10] Interview with Richard Santalesa of Information Law Group

[42:48] Article about the problems with math textbooks
Source: Open Salon

[45:40] Apple’s e-textbooks cost about 5x more than paper version
Source: Education Business Blog

[48:50] Why Pearson should build its on tablet
Source: Disrupt Education

[54:15] Samsung to introduce iTunes U competitor called “learning hub”
Source: The Next Web

[1:00:53] Thank you to our sponsor Languagelab.com

[1:03:00] Clemson University & Dell launch Social Media Listening Center
Source: Dell

[1:09:35] Discussion around the state of online learning

[1:16:50] US Department of Education is reading Twitter
Source: Yahoo

[1:20:30] OLPC Tablet design not only important for developing countries
Source: CNN

[1:25:30] Knewton featured on Forbes
Source: Forbes

[1:27:20] If Chris Dawson founded a startup
Source: ZDNet

review:ed #15 Who owns your Data?

Click here for previous episodes

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Guest, Pleasure, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.