Audrey Watters is a writer and independent scholar who focuses on education technology — its products, its politics, its pedagogical implications. Her Spencer Fellowship-supported project on the shape and power of the technology network was published in the 2018 fall education of The Baffler. It’s called The Fables of School Reform.
In addition, Watters developed a book proposal during her Spencer year on the history of education technology in the 20th century and the development of early teaching machines by education psychologists. Her book Teaching Machines, is set to be published by MIT Press.
She is continuing to develop her data base which will eventually allow the public to trace the historical, political and financial connections between education companies and the vast network of education technology venture capitalists.
Watters has worked in the education field for almost twenty years: as a graduate student, college instructor, and program manager for an ed-tech non-profit. Although she was two chapters into her Comparative Literature dissertation, she decided to abandon academia, and she now happily fulfills the one job recommended to her by a junior high aptitude test: freelance writer. She has written for The Atlantic, Edutopia, Inside Higher Ed, The School Library Journal, and elsewhere across the Web, but she is best known for her work on her own website Hack Education (http://hackeducation.com)
Watters has given keynotes and presentations on education technology around the world and is the author of several books, including The Monsters of Education Technology, The Revenge of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Curse of the Monsters of Education Technology, Claim Your Domain, and Teaching Machines.