About Justin
Welcome to EdTechResearcher, an online portfolio for Justin Reich. I’m an education researcher broadly interested in the future of learning in a networked world. This site is an experiment in creating a multimedia, academic C.V. to document my research, advocacy, and work with students and educators. It also archives as much of my writing as possible, including my original EdTechResearcher blog, which was hosted here for about four months before moving to Education Week.
Fundamentally, I’m motivated by the belief that young people are tremendously capable, and we need to develop educational systems that tap their energy, creativity, drive and talent.
Personally, I’m a husband and father and an avid adventurer and traveler.
Bios and High-Resolution Head Shots
Short Bio:
Justin Reich is an educational researcher interested in the future of learning in a networked world. Currently, he is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a visiting lecturer at MIT, and the director of online community, research, and practice at Facing History and Ourselves. Justin is the co-founder of EdTechTeacher, a professional learning consultancy devoted to helping teachers leverage technology to create student-centered, inquiry-based learning environments. He earned his doctorate from Harvard University, where he led the Distributed Collaborative Learning Communities project, a Hewlett Foundation funded initiative to examine how social media are used in K-12 classrooms. He writes the EdTechResearcher blog for Education Week, and his writings have appeared in Educational Researcher, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.
Longer Bio/Introduction:
Justin Reich is an educational researcher broadly interested in the future of learning in a networked world. His professional work is motivated by a desire to transform the architecture of education away from centralized, hierarchical models of teaching and towards distributed, networked models of learning. He studies, designs, and advocates for learning systems that shift education from something done to learners to something done with learners, from channels of dissemination to webs of sharing.
He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a visiting lecturer in MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education program. He is the director of Online Community, Practice and Research at Facing History and Ourselves, an organization devoted to combating bigotry and nurturing democracy through history education. He is also the co-founder of EdTechTeacher, a professional learning consultancy devoted to helping teachers leverage technology to create student-centered, inquiry-based learning environments.He earned his doctorate from Harvard University, where he led the Distributed Collaborative Learning Communities project, a Hewlett Foundation funded initiative to examine how social media are used in K-12 classrooms. His dissertation, The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K-12 Schools, drew upon a population of 180,000 education-related wikis and over 100 interviews and observations with wiki-using teachers to measure the degree to which wikis supported deeper learning in classrooms across the United States.
Justin’s current research, practice and advocacy projects explore different facets of connected learning. With Facing History, his research and work examines different facets of examines how online professional learning opportunities (both formal and informal) can support educators’ efforts to develop students’ historical thinking and moral reasoning skills. With EdTechTeacher, he is hosting a series of national iPad summits that use schools’ fervor for iPads as a “Trojan mouse” to shift edtech discourse away from distribution mechanisms (apps) and towards pedagogies that guide students from consumption to curation, creation, and connection. With TechGoesHome, a poverty-alleviation non-profit, he is developing a Family Learning Model that addresses STEM achievement gaps by using mobile devices that engage entire families in STEM learning. He is part of a team at the Berkman Center designing and researching HLS1x Copyright, a course on the edX platform. With Harvard’s Project Zero, he coordinates a design-based learning experience for the Future of Learning Institute, and is developing a research project exploring how youth make meaning of school-based approaches to cyber-bullying and online cruelty and meanness.
Justin is a co-author of Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Teachers, and his academic work has been published in Educational Researcher, Social Education, Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, and other venues. His opinion writings have been published in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Providence Journal, and other publications. He blogs for Education Week at EdTechResearcher.
Justin has been an Outstanding Educator in Residence for the Academy of Singapore Teachers, a Digital Media and Learning Summer Fellow with the MacArthur Foundation, and is among the 2012 class of Emerging Leaders for the International Society for Technology in Education.
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