Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

After attending a seance, Charles Darwin said, “The Lord have mercy on us all, if we believe in such rubbish.”

Teachers complain. They complain a lot. No, really. You can’t imagine the things teachers say about students, colleagues, administrators, parents, and everyone else. When I hear their complaints now, I may nod, but it is like white noise to me; with one exception. When I hear, “I taught it, but they didn’t learn it” I pay attention. I want to know who said it; I want to remember that person and I accept the challenge they unknowingly made to me to help them better understand what it means to teach.
#edutoot

Blumenfield, Kempler, and Krajcik (2006) suggest engagement in grounded in four factors:

Value- Learners tend to be engaged with material and lessons they believe are important to them. Value is also closely related to motivation, interest, and goals, all of which are addressed in the next section.

Competence- Learners tend to engage in activities they believe are within their abilities. Competence is grounded in one’s knowledge, their metacognitive abilities and their self-efficacy.

Relatedness- Learners tend to be engaged when they feel positive social connection to their peers.

Autonomy- Learners tend to be engaged when they can exercise choice about what they will study and their plan of study.

Blumenfield, P., Kempler, T., & Krajcik, J. (2006). Motivation and cognitive engagement in learning environments. In R. Keith Sawyer (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learning Science, (pp. 475-488). Cambridge University Press.

#edutoot

Inert knowledge can be understood as knowledge that is meaningful only within the classroom. Whatever is learned is relevant only to problems and situations framed and solved in the context of the class and within the boundaries of the class. Many teachers defend this approach to education from the position that they must teach information first. “How can students use the information,” they reason, “until they know it?” Whitehead would respond, “The mind is never passive…. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it." When learning is assumed to be the transfer of information, we approach students minds as passive, and passive minds do not learn.

We have all experienced the change in our brains we call learning. We become capable of remembering information, performing actions, recognizing patterns, appreciating observations, asking questions, and otherwise interacting with ideas, tools, and people in a way we could not previously. Becoming aware of and evaluating our capabilities is learning as well. The many processes mentioned in this paragraph can be labeled cognition, and learning is about improving our cognitive abilities.

Look at your organization's IT.

Does it's use closely aligned with strategic goals?
Is it functioning... like does it really work well?
Is it sustainable given financial and personnel resources?

The answers are often "no" when looking at schools.

You would think the algorithm would have learned by now that when I type chappenge, I mean challenge. Yes, I know, I could ass it to the autocorrect rules, but with all of the machine learning, I figured it'd be automatic by now.

The faculty member is mislead by the textbook vendor… and the LMS administrator at their school is to blame.

In the absence of technology, knowledge can only be shared as far as the human voice can travel. Transporting the knowledge a greater distance requires the human brain that contains the information be transported to the new location.

I’m an #edtech professional, but I don’t want edtech companies teaching teachers. #education #edutoot

The situation regarding IT management in many schools is well-captured by the hypothetical (and sarcastic) Putt’s Law. According to Archibald Putt, “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand” (Putt, 2006, p. 7). Further, Putt articulated a corollary, “Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion” (p. 7). While these words are intended to be humorously cynical observations, they do describe the current state of IT management in schools:

• Technology professionals configure IT systems for students and teachers, but they are unfamiliar with emerging technology-rich pedagogy. In Putt’s terms, IT professionals are managing devices for purposes they do not understand.

• Educators complain about the IT systems in schools, but they don’t understand the complexity of managing IT systems, the potential conflicts and threats to the operation of enterprise IT, and general chaos that can result when enterprise networks are not tightly controlled. In Putt’s terms, educators seek to manage IT they do not understand.

• School leaders make budget and personnel decisions that impose unrealistic limits on IT professionals and they advocate for practices beyond the capacity of the available IT or are contrary to the professional tendencies of the teachers.

Reference

Putt, A. (2006). Putt’s law & the successful technocrat: How to win in the information age. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

If cause and effect could be reliably determined in teaching, then it would have been discovered long ago, and we would never hear “I taught it, but they didn’t learn it” and also the never-ending calls for education reform would be silent.

er 10, 2021 by Gary Ackerman
If instructors and school leaders seek to create schools in which practices and structures are aligned with the realities of human learning, then they must recognize certain characteristics of learners & learning.

First, the students who arrive in schools are experienced learners. Their experiences are affected by their culture, motivation, academic, and personal experiences. Any list of the relevant factors will be incomplete, and the nuances of how these have culminated in the individual entering your classroom cannot be known. Students are not blank slates, nor do they have exactly the prior knowledge you want them to have. Realize the students who entered may not be the students your wanted, but they are the students you have.

Second, learning comprises many different types of abilities and actions. While not every field requires al types of thinking and learning, every field depends on learning being able to demonstrate more than declarative knowledge. Statistical learning (based on pattens), observation (especially watching experts), perceptual learning (one’s ability to interpret as expertise develops), and design (iterative practical problem solving) are all examples of learning that teachers must facilitate. Your job as an instructor is to support all of them. I #edutoots

Did you ever notice students have their own interests and motivations, and that many are not as enamored with your curriculum as you are? I have... and those are the students we must work the hardest to engage with interesting problems and questions. #education #edutoots

Narcissists flock together… until they don’t. Invariably, they turn in each other. It was very entertaining to watch when it happened in k-12 faculty.