Long-form conversations about what education is for.
Steve Hargadon Interviews follows long-form conversations with educators, writers, technologists, and school reformers. The series favors careful questions, lived classroom detail, and broad arguments about what learning institutions are actually built to do.
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Steve Hargadon Interviews is a broad, patient record of education thinking in conversation. Its center of gravity is not breaking news or quick classroom tips. It is the deeper question of what learning systems are for. Across the sampled episodes, Steve Hargadon speaks with educators, authors, technologists, and reform-minded guests about schools, colleges, teaching, technology, and the lived pressures around them. The pace is deliberate. A conversation about reinventing school turns toward bored and detached students, adult system-thinking, and the power teachers may not realize they hold. A discussion of exceptional students becomes a larger exchange about language, family support, situational privilege, and teacher wellness. The higher education episode moves through pandemic uncertainty, finances, credentials, employers, climate anxiety, and student decision-making. The teacher entrepreneurship conversation frames teacher entrepreneurship less as self-promotion than as a difficult question of significance, value, contribution, and self-work. The microschools episode weighs freedom against structure, asking how learners develop self-direction without losing useful scaffolding. Older live sessions add another texture: online platforms, audience participation, social networking, documentary education events, and a roster of education and technology conversations. The show’s habit is cumulative. It lets a guest make a claim, then asks what that claim means for students, teachers, families, institutions, and public purpose. That can make episodes feel more like an open seminar than a polished media product. The roughness is part of the record. Live-event logistics, upcoming-session mentions, and occasional platform instructions sit alongside substantive discussion, especially in archived material. The editorial value is in the range and the seriousness of the inquiry. It keeps returning to purpose, equity, agency, and the gap between what schools say they do and what they actually do. The show is best for listeners who can sit with long answers. It rewards patience with a wide map of education’s unresolved questions.
Made for: Educators, school leaders, education technologists, researchers, and reform-minded parents who prefer careful discussion over quick prescriptions. It also suits listeners interested in how classroom realities connect to policy, technology, and institutional design.
What sets it apart: The series stands out for its slow, cumulative interview style and its willingness to connect big education theory back to students, families, teachers, and live learning communities. It treats guests as thinkers in an ongoing public conversation rather than as stops on a promotion circuit.
Steve Hargadon is the founder and director of the Learning Revolution Project, the host of the Future of Education interview series, and the founder and chair (or co-chair) of a number of annual worldwide virtual events, including the Global Education Conference and the Library 2.0 series of mini-conferences. Steve built one of the first modern social networks for teachers in 2007 (Classroom 2.0) and pioneered the use of live, virtual, and peer-to-peer education conferences. He popularized the idea of "unconferences" for educators with his long-running Hack Education annual event.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Steve Hargadon's interviews connect educational tools and systems to the practical choices that shape teaching, credentials, collaboration, and student agency.
Steve Hargadon treats education technology as a question of how people learn, who controls the structure, and what tools make possible. His interviews move between higher education's financial strain, alternatives to conventional schooling, teacher entrepreneurship, and the…
From wiki whiteboards to microschools, Steve Hargadon gives your classroom what-ifs a microphone.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
School reform, viewed from the classroom up through the people running it.
Howard Blumenthal's conversation with Steve Hargadon is driven by a familiar frustration: after nearly 50 shows and years of Kids on Earth work, the same school problems keep returning.
A careful discussion of exceptionalities, caring adults, and the conditions that shape teaching.
The episode treats educational language as part of the work, not a side issue. Steve Hargadon asks Rebecca Muller to connect exceptional circumstances for exceptional students with teacher wellness, and Muller explains why she uses "exceptionalities": it keeps attention on the…
A sharp look at higher ed under strain, the four-year degree reality, and the pull toward more flexible credentials.
Steve Hargadon and Brian Alexander spend the hour on higher ed under strain, and the piece is at its best when it stays grounded in the practical pressure points: new infections are unsettling fall plans, finances still look grim, and the conversation keeps coming back to what…
Teacher entrepreneurship is framed as a question of significance, self-worth, and knowing what matters.
Teacher entrepreneurship is treated as more than a career theme; the stronger thread is significance, and what it means for educators to feel that their work matters.
A patient conversation on pairing learner freedom with the structure that helps self-direction grow.
Mara Leineberger treats microschools less as a matter of scale than as a test of educational purpose. The conversation moves from loosely structured democratic schools to academy models that sit closer to public schooling, always circling the same practical question: how much…
A wiki session that favors classroom practice over software gloss.
Sue Waters keeps the second Go Wild with Wikis session grounded in practice rather than polish. She moves the room through microphone, chat, and whiteboard participation, which gives the discussion a steady, useful pace.
An educator's early network stories become a clear case for how school habits lag behind new tools.
The piece follows David Warlick as he turns an educator's memories into a concise account of early school technology, moving from a calculator that cost $200 to a first direct encounter with the Internet.
School stories, told close to the classroom.
Local STEM careers, told plainly.
Science teaching, modeled from the classroom out.
Faculty conversations on sepsis, sunscreen and science fiction.
Steve Hargadon interviews Doug Rushkoff about his book and discusses upcoming interviews on education and technology.
Steve Hargadon interviews Tara Hunt about her book and discusses upcoming educational events.
A webinar for teachers introducing technology resources and strategies for teaching about place in connection with Ken Burns' National Park series.
Steve Hargadon introduces the Illuminate platform and sets the stage for a panel discussion on middle level STEM education.
Steve Hargadon interviews Audrey Waters about her Hack Education posts, discussing recent edtech news and trends including Codecademy's CodeYear campaign.
Sue Waters hosts the second part of 'Go Wild With Wikis,' a series aimed at helping educators use web technologies with students.
David Warlick delivers a keynote structured as ten personal stories tracing his journey with educational technology from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.
Steve Hargadon interviews Scott Rosenberg about his book on blogging, with announcements of upcoming education-related events and guests.
A virtual event introducing the Illuminate platform and previewing a documentary about principals, hosted by Steve Hargadon.
Howard Blumenthal argues that personal health and fitness should be the first line in a 21st-century curriculum.
Steve Hargadon and Rebecca Muller use special education, IDEA, and IEP meetings to argue that schools claim individuality while still enforcing "standardized individuality." Muller links math anxiety, third- and fourth-grade shame, and social emotional learning to teacher wellness, saying upper-grade math teaching often turns her into "a therapist to help them manage math." The conversation ties public schooling to compliance, vocational tracks, and "the game of school," with Hargadon and Muller debating agency, self-direction, and who actually benefits.
Steve Hargadon and Brian Alexander use 'College 2.0' to examine higher ed’s confused pandemic planning, declining enrollment, and the long slide in public funding.
Angela Maiers says entrepreneurship starts with a "deep dive into themselves" and a "personal value proposition."
Mara Leineberger says a micro school is a "marketing term," not a legal category, and schools still have to follow the school code.
Steve Hargadon interviews Clay Shirky about the future of education, with upcoming guests and show announcements.