---
published: true
layout: post
title: >-
  Why Every Education Company Needs an API (& Why Educators Should Care When
  One Doesn't)
image: >-
  http://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/api-evangelist-site/blog/darcy_modified.jpg
author:
  name: kinlane
tags:
  - Education
---
When I was a tech blogger for [ReadWriteWeb](http://readwriteweb.com) and API-related news broke, we writers would often shudder. “Well, you can’t use API in the headline,” the argument in the newsroom went. It’s the page-view-kiss-of-death. That’s not because APIs aren’t super-important or super-ubiquitous on the Web (they are both). It’s because most “[normals](http://cdixon.org/2010/01/22/techies-and-normals/)” don’t know what they are or why they matter. They’d rather click on a story that says “101 Ways to Use Pinterest to Plan Your Wedding.”

The decision to cover APIs regularly on ReadWriteWeb and eschew stories that fall into the “\[Number\] Ways to Use \[Hot New Social Media Tool\] to \[Conduct a Seasonally-Relevant Activity\]” goes a long way to explain the popularity of RWW versus that of Mashable, incidentally.

Also incidentally: Pinterest [has an API](http://tijn.bo.lt/pinterest-api).

This all presents a bit of a challenge, of course, if I want to make an argument for my readers here about why APIs really matter in education. Do I frame the argument for “normals”? (Wait! HA! “Normals” don’t read Hack Education!) Do I frame it for educators? Entrepreneurs? Technologists? The answer: hopefully all of the above.

What is an API?