Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

It never ceases to amaze me that folks look to me (yes, I work in IT) and ask "What's my password?"

One thing I learned during 35 years in education: there are some folks who really do believe “passing the test” and “knowing the material” are the same thing.

Quotes are great, but often when we go to the original source and find the context and meaning, the author was making the opposite point.

I’ve no interest in AI tools to help me write.

I write to understand the topic and clarify my thinking. That others consume the words, sentences, and paragraphs and find meaning in them too is a delightful side effect.

Retention.

I'm not sure this is a really useful concept in teaching.

Why don't we let our students know what the assessment will be like before we "test them?"

Mastery is a temporary state. Let's not make it the goal of #education.

Business and politics are human endeavors that are easily measured; the results of business and politics are generally objective and unequivocal. Profits sufficient for the owner or shareholders defines successful business. Capturing more votes makes one a political winner. (Yes, I know there are plenty of exceptions but let’s not get distracted.)

In both cases, the measure is clearly defined and quantifiable. In both cases, also, the term is relatively short; profits are reported quarterly, elections held every few years. Further, in each case, there is an element of competition; businesses gain greater profits or market share than other companies producing similar products or services, and elections have winners who take office and losers who remain in the citizenry.

Learning is a natural phenomena that is not clearly definable, it is difficult to quantify, and it is long-term in that the quality of the education may not be known until much later and the judgments of the quality can change over time. What is learned, how well it is learned, and how long it stays learned are all aspects of human nature that cannot be defined and quantified like profits and votes.

Today in northeast USA… season’s first snow delays the opening of the college. Seed catalog for 2023 arrived yesterday.

“The course is free, but the certificate is not.”

This ploy seems to validate the suggestion that the “piece of paper” really does matter… of course today it’s snippet of code.

I was at a meeting yesterday where the presenter said half way through their colleague was taking notes so that we “can collect data from our discussions. Maybe your quotes will show up In later presentations.” Am I over sensitive or should they have informed us first?

Reading. Writing. Thinking. Doing math. Doing science. Etc.

None of these can be reduced to one type of activity.

Educators spend their days in rooms filled with young people. It can be a glorious existence, it can be a dreary existence. It is an existence dedicated to providing those young people with experiences that prepare them for an unknowable future.

Ingenious humans solve engineering problems very quickly.

If good teaching was known and reliable and amenable to engineering, it would have been done long ago.