Substack Essays

I recently posted “Is Modesty an Advantage?

What Lessons Can We Learn from the Canvas Hack? — Lesson Threee

There is considerable Sturm und Drang these days about the skills gap. It’s not a new worry, but the advent of AI has turned it into something closer to a crisis. We do need to worry about the skills gap, but there is a related problem that deserves just as much attention:

How students and faculty find resilience amid the trauma of war

This goes in my Weekend Vignettes / Backlog Section. It’s a topic I am thinking about and will become a future post.

Phil Hill's recent reporting on the Canvas security incidents includes a “technical deep dive” from Instructure.

The Learning Management System sits at the center of the modern education ecosystem.

Education is too often approached through the lens of solutions, especially technology solutions.

Lesson Two: Runway to Reinvent — The Case of Blackboard

Lesson One: Beware of Technical Debt

Wittgenstein observed that language is prone to bewitchment, leading us to errors, misunderstandings, and tragedies.

The University of Texas at Austin has come out with guidance on the use of AI Detection Software.

The CoreLMS Open Source Code Repository is now live and available here:

On Monday, May 4, 2026, I will make the code repository for the CoreLMS project available under an MIT open source license.

When I took Ancient Greek in graduate school, I became enamored with the “Men ..de (μέν…δέ)” construction — enamored to the point of pomposity.

In a previous post (“Rome Wasn’t Build in a Day, But What About an LMS?”) I presented a conceptual overview of CoreLMS, an open-source demonstration platform.

There are no Broadway musicals about George Washington: he was neither flashy nor brilliant in the usual sense.

I came across this wonderful video “Is Drawing Good for You?” by the Getty Museum.

The always excellent Jill Barshay of the Hechinger report suggests her in Proof Points newsletter that perhaps that the AI Tide might be turning.

Recently, I have been peddling a two-part argument about Learning Management Systems (LMS).