Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

I cooperate with my teammates to beat the team from the next town over, but we cooperate with that team to beat teams from the county, and with those to beat beat the state... and the trend continues. Eventually, we recognize that we are all share the same fate.

If you are only open to planned activities, the unpredictable teachable moments will be lost.

Decisions made in one part of the school influence others; we know that healthy brains learn better, so decisions about school lunch and physical education matter.

What happens in your classroom matters and students' emotional state when they interact determines what they learn and how they learn it.

No matter how much humans think about technologies and the potential effects they will have on humans, when deployed, there are outcomes that no one could have predicted.

Technologies are built one upon another so that any technology becomes a complex of others; while changing one technology in the complex influences the others and the whole, each retains an independent nature.

All disputes in science are resolved by evidence and observation, and evidence and observation must follow the rules of logic.

Human knowledge is as much a social activity as it is a cognitive activity. We can understand and learn alone, but we are better at it when we do it together. Much better.

A blog post on multiple working hypotheses now with audio:
https://www.hackscience.education/on-multiple-working-hypotheses/

Too often teachers simply repeat their original explanation, only slower, in hopes that students will understand things that confuse them. The word "them" at the end of that sentence can refer either to the student or the teacher.

I have an uncommon ability to phrase questions in ways leaders cannot avoid them. It annoys them.

If you claim a method works “like magic,” I’m not going to take you seriously. I might look closer at the method, but I’m not interested in your assessment.

Heutagogy. Educators who don’t make space and time for it are missing an opportunity to make school relevant.

Being a teacher who is and understands research findings and is competent using them means you needs to keep quiet when school leaders advocate "quacky" ideas.

If folks are leaving your organization and you express surprise, then you are probably not paying attention.

"These data are objective" is a sign they are not.

A single test score does not tell us anything interesting or useful.

Real data-driven folks understand that all measurements contain error.

Scientists are always specific about what they are measuring, and there are accepted methods for measuring these quantities. Education is not the same.

I graduated from high school and started my preparation to be an educator in 1983. That is the year A Nation at Risk was released. "Schools are failing" is not new.