Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

IT is schools must be:
-appropriate for teaching and learning
-proper to be reliable, robust and secure
-reasonable to be sustainable and consistent with other initiatives

"When teachers are convinced about the value, they are generally quite flexible and accommodating to new ideas." I wrote this more than a decade ago. I'm note sure it is accurate today.

Elevator Pitch on Culture and Learning
https://hackscience.education/2020/02/18/elevator-pitch-on-culture-and-learning/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

One particularly narcissistic administrator for whom I worked was known to respond, “Well, I’m sorry I’m not perfect…” and walked away (actually storming away is more accurate) when others refused to accept his Pollyannaish interpretation of situations. He missed the point that whoever was challenging him was not seeking perfection, but they were seeking to understand the situation and find which part of the system failed.

The narcissistic educator has a decidedly adversarial reaction to competence. Competent professionals tend to be:
- Stable because they can justify their actions with a well-articulated rationale;
- Insightful because they are constructively critical of themselves and others;
- Humble because they have internalized their competence;
- Confident they can adapt to new situations.

Those educators who take time to explain their rationale to students when using authority have more credibility with students, and they are more likely to follow unexplained authoritarian decisions from those teachers.

It is only though changing the structure and function of this organ that we learn. Some experiences change the brain quickly and permanently; some experiences change the brain slowly and reversibly.

Schools have always been political institutions, but recent decades have found them increasingly political. This appears to be grounded in the electoral benefits that can be gained by politicians who promise to “fix education.”

Sometimes the solutions are "fixing" the wrong problems.

"Back in the day" we rejected Channel 0 because it was advertisement driven. Today, we link students to YouTube videos without a second thought.

File Formats https://hackscience.net/2024/08/18/file-formats/

Leadership and Goals and Decisions
https://hackscience.education/2020/03/05/leadership-and-goals-and-decisions/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

I’m preparing to teach some math this fall— the first time in more than 5 years—and I’m reminded how important it is to start with concepts.

Water seems the resource we should worry about not oil.

Would Darwin be in social media? Given his voluminous letter writing, I conclude, “yes.”

An Elevator Pitch on the Changing Nature of Teaching and Learning
https://hackscience.education/2020/02/17/an-elevator-pitch-on-the-changing-nature-of-teaching-and-learning/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Research is designed to answer questions. In school, we too often focus research papers by topics. The simple change to researching to answer a question with an ambiguous answer can improve the experience of research.

Would you hire the person who said “In business we try to upsell customers, so we generate more income. We should treat teachers just like we treat customers. Upsell them to get more out of them” in an interview to lead your IT department in a school?

The expertise and skill needed to keep enterprise IT networks operational is something that educators are very unlikely to have. Further, the work of keeping enterprise IT operational is a full-time job. For these reasons, schools hire IT professionals to keep the IT available to users.

Securing dat would be much easier if we didn't need to use it.