How "Free Technology for Teachers" Curates All Its Info About EdTech

I've had the pleasure to read an interesting interview to Richard Byrne, the Free Technology for Teacher editor. Audrey Watters at Hack Education has published the analysis of this interview where Byrne shares his criteria to pick the information he uploads to his blog, and how he manages to pay attention to sites and startups to are to stay in his own pint of view.

The whole text of the interview is here. We are reproducing only what supports the title of this post:

Byrne says his criteria for choosing topics to blog about are “fairly simple”: ease of use, survivability of the resource, and existence/type of advertising. “Anything that takes more than ten minutes to feel comfortable with, I generally don’t write about,” he says. “I feel like if I, someone who spends 30+ hours a week using web-based programs, can’t figure out a new service/ program quickly then teachers who are new to using technology in education, aren’t likely to feel comfortable using that service/program. If a teacher isn’t comfortable using a program, they’re not likely to take it into his/her classroom.”

Byrne also tries to write about the services he thinks will be around for a while. Sites and startups come and go, and that can complicate (to say the least) teaching plans. So he pays attention to the business outlook for these resources — particularly for services that will be hosting students’ data and work, asking questions about data portability. As the name of the blog suggests, the resources that Byrne posts are free, and so he also examines if and how those tools use advertising. And alongside those that are free, Byrne says he’s keen to see more tools that are open. “I would love to see more development tools that don’t require a proprietary product like Java or Silverlight in order to run,” he says, praising open tools like Aviary and JayCut.

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