Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

I sent my laptop to my son to finish up his masters degree (they always fail at the least opportune times), so I picked up a new one. They really are easier to set up compared to 20 years ago.

I'm no longer a teacher, but I stil; clean my home office whenever classes end.

In my freshman year of high school (ca. 1979) we had a 10-period day, but students only attended 6 or 7. One year, a group of us arrived at 7:30 for small gas engine repair then sat through study hall until our other classes started.

Tutoring and teaching are different. Yes? No?

I often wonder about the science teacher who said to me once, "There just must be something in horoscopes. Right?"

My mentor in qualitative research maintained researchers must transcribe their interviews themselves. My typing skills were sharpened when I followed their advice. I’m not sure it improved my analysis, but how would one know?

Let’s not assume teachers are a homogeneous group. They vary in their beliefs about what constitutes effective education, so it’s hard to get consensus and one can find support for any wacky idea.

For the typologist, the type (edios) is real and variation an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction and only variation is real. - Ernst Mayer writing about Darwin, a populationist.

I have full admin access to everything in our LMS. There are many things I don’t do although I can. For example, I can fix the link to the exam after the instructor has not responded to emails/ voice mails for more than a month, but I don’t.

Why do we treat test scores as precise measures, when they are at best an estimate of a range?

“I’m a good at multitasking.”

Are you? Are you really?

Research and data collection begins with the question you want to answer. “Can they pass this test?” isn’t a worthy question.

What if we focused education around questions that AI can’t answer?

“Do your research” and “read my echo chamber” are not the same thing.

I taught science in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s (before moving to edtech for the next 30 years and counting). I kept the best collection of pirated TV shows from PBS!

Yeah, say what you will about generative AI... it is a pretty good editor.

We all “write it right” the first time, but gremlins come it at night and change it to text that needs significant revision… those gremlins need to stop.

The problem is (at least in my experience), folks bastardize the system, then complain it doesn’t work.

I’m very happy that folks smarter than I am are willing to ask me questions and challenge me.

If your ideas suck, get better ones.