BY JUSTIN REICH

Virtual Book Club Podcast

In the Fall of 2020 Justin Reich hosted special guest presenters, students from MIT, and others from around the world in a discussion of the 10 chapters of Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education. Then he explored those discussions in his TeachLab Podcast.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
BUY NOW
Failure To Disrupt Book Cover

Virtual Book Club Guests

Chris Gilliard

Professor of English at Macomb Community College concentrating on privacy, institutional tech policy, digital redlining, and the re-inventions of discriminatory practices through data mining and algorithmic decision-making, especially as these apply to college students.

START LISTENING

Audrey Waters

Founder of Hack Education and author of The Monsters of Education Technology and (soon!) Teaching Machines.

START LISTENING

George Siemens

Writer, theorist, speaker, and researcher on learning, networks, technology, analytics and visualization, openness, organizational effectiveness, and complexity in digital environments.

START LISTENING

Elizabeth Losh

Gale and Steve Kohlhagen Professor of English and American Studies at William & Mary specializing in Rhetoric; Digital Publishing; Feminism & Technology; Digital Humanities; Electronic Literature.

START LISTENING

Christina and Neil Heffernan

Husband and wife duo Neil and Cristina Heffernan are the co-founders of ASSISTments

START LISTENING

Natalie Rusk and Mitch Resnick

MIT Media Lab Researchers developing creative learning technologies and co-creators of Scratch.

START LISTENING

Scot Osterweil

Creative Director of the Education Arcade. He has designed award-winning games in both academic and commercial environments, focusing on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects.

START LISTENING

Constance Steinkuehler

American professor of Informatics at the University of California–Irvine.

START LISTENING

Dan Meyer

Former high school math teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator now Chief Academic at Desmos.

START LISTENING

Antero Garcia

Antero studies how technology and gaming shape youth learning, literacy practices, and civic identities at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.

LISTEN NOW

Courtney Bell

Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) focused on teacher evaluation, the measurement of teaching, and its relationship to student growth and development. 

LISTEN NOW

Candace Thille

Founder of Open Learning Initiative (OLI), former Stanford professor and currently Amazon’s Director of Learning Science.

LISTEN NOW

Latest Episodes

Edutopia May 2021
Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.
LISTEN
Inside Higher Ed, June 2021
Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.
LISTEN
How much has technology changed higher education?
Alexander, Bryan. (April 30, 2021). How much has technology changed higher education? Future Trends Forum 
LISTEN
Have Your Heard Podcast with Jennifer Berkshire
The pandemic gave the education technology industry the opportunity to FINALLY deliver on the bold promises it has been making for decades. What happened instead was just another failure to disrupt, says MIT’s Justin Reich.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Kevin Gannon
For TeachLab’s tenth and final Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Kevin Gannon, professor and director of the Teaching and Learning Center at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Candace Thille
For TeachLab’s ninth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Candace Thille, director of Learning Science at Amazon and former researcher and faculty member at Stanford University and at Carnegie Mellon. Together they discuss Chapter 8, The Toxic Power of Data and Experiment.
LISTEN
Majority Report with Sam Seder
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Courtney Bell
For TeachLab’s eighth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Courtney Bell
LISTEN
Inside Higher Ed
From Joshua Kim: Why you should read Justin Reich’s essential new book before planning your school’s next big educational technology-related initiative.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Antero Garcia
For TeachLab’s seventh Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Antero Garcia.
LISTEN
Twelve Geniuses Podcast with Don McPherson
The Future of Education with Justin Reich
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Dan Meyer
For TeachLab’s sixth Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Dan Meyer, the chief academic officer at Desmos. Together they discuss the work of Desmos and the section of Justin’s book on the “Curse of the Familiar.”
LISTEN
Spark (CBC)
Disruptive tech alone won’t revolutionize education, says author.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Scot Osterweil and Constance Steinkuehler
For TeachLab’s fifth Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guests Scot Osterweil, a game designer and creative director for the MIT Education Arcade, and the esteemed games researcher Constance Steinkuehler. They discuss the history of learning games, their current work, and Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 4: Testing the Learning at Scale Genres: Learning Games.
LISTEN
Talk Louisiana
Why technology is no replacement for in-person education
LISTEN
Rising Up with Sonali
Across the United States millions of school aged kids are returning to school after their winter break but in the era of the pandemic, many are still connecting with teachers and classmates via remote digital platforms.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Natalie Rusk and Mitch Resnick
For TeachLab’s fourth Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, we look back at Justin’s live conversation with Natalie Rusk and Mitch Resnick from MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Lab and who are the developers of the Computer Clubhouse program and the Scratch programming language. They discuss the founding of these programs as well as Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 3: Peer-Guided Learning at Scale: Networked Learning Environments.
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Cristina and Neil Heffernan
For TeachLab’s third Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, Justin Reich reflects on a live conversation with special guests Cristina and Neil Heffernan. They discuss Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 2: Algorithm-Guided Learning at Scale: Adaptive Tutors, and discuss the success of their tool ASSISTments.
LISTEN
Webinar on Reimagine Higher and Continuing Education
LISTEN
Failure to Disrupt Book Club with George Siemens and Elizabeth Losh
For TeachLab’s second Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, Justin Reich is joined again by friend and colleague Audrey Watters to reflect on their conversation with special guests George Siemens and Elizabeth Losh. They discuss Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 1: Instructor-Guided Learning at Scale and Massive Open Online Courses, looking at “three big bets of MOOCs,” and exploring why MOOCs failed to achieve their most ambitious goals.
LISTEN
Keynote Sharing “Change and Constancy”
LISTEN