Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Especially in this century, education has become the focus of much political attention. Government agencies, politicians, and philanthropists are all much more influential in determining educational policy and practice than they were in previous generations.

What is with the new trend of having current data on the left of bar graphs and older data to the right?

I'm old enought to remember when the things we must do to be effective educators were not a thing.

"You do it too" isn't an argument .

The first generation of "digital natives" are adults, some of whom are educators. The predictions that they'd become skilled users of IT were wrong.

If we paid more attention to interpreting our data that to "using" it, we'd make better decisions.

I'm looking back at a career's worth of initiatives. Sometimes the money comes before the commitment; sometime the commitment comes before the money. Success requires these coincide, but that is a rare feat for leaders.

In organizations, members experience initiative fatigue; there are so many things, they lose interest in all of them. Leaders experience it too; there support for each slowly erodes.

I've managed IT for decades, I know when they are BS'ing, but they do it ayways.

If you don't include it in the budget, it can't be important.

Great data. How do you know it isn't regression to the mean?

So much instruction ignores what we know about brains.

Humans do not pay attention to boring things. No matter how important teachers say they are.

Occam's razor applies to technology tools as well. "When faced with a choice, select the more simple tool."

One cannot build sophisticated knowledge unless one has sophisticated knowledge. Teachers--good teachers--give students experiences that lead to it.

Effective teachers create rich context and social interaction in their classrooms.

If you have never been in front of a classroom full of students waiting for you to fix the projector, then they are not qualified to be a school technology leader.

The technology you have may not be the technology you need, but it is the technology you will be told is what you need.

I recently found the picture I took at a "new school year kickoff" a few years back. The principal shared a slide with the 12 initiatives they had underway. the acronyms made a letter salad on the screen.

There is plenty wrong with education, but "it's not it was" is not one of them,.