Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

One thing I learned during 35+ years in education: it’s the system.

Good, bad, indifferent… none arises fro. A single factor.

I started my undergraduate preparation in education in 1983. The same year A Nation at Risk was published. The rants against school are not new.

It is possible to engineer lessons, but you must not ignore the variability of learners, and fewer factors affect the results of a lesson greater than the individual learners.

One thing I learned during 25+ years providing IT support: response time matters.

Simple models are great, but don’t depend on them to be accurate.

I often buy books at used book sales that I find offensive (The Bell Curve is an example) and I leave them in my library indefinitely. Should I continue this practice? Is it OK to take the books for recycling?

I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t necessary to ask “where are you?” When talking to someone on the phone.

Many good people work in broken systems.

AI beats humans at algorithm-based tasks, but then we would expect that.

When a decision has been made to suffice, leaders should admit it. Most see efforts to promote it as the best solution as disingenuous.

The task is clarified until we know the tools, but sometimes the tools change the task we decide to do.

Since I retired from teaching, the “back to school” advertisements are not as troubling as they were.

Here is your regular reminder that Deming was working in manufacturing not education.

Humans who are thinking in groups do it differently than when they do it individually.

Call me what you will, but I participate in and identify with communities that reject ideas that are demonstrably false.

What if the purpose of education standards were designed to “spur addictions, expansions, and variations—not adherence?”

For humans, “What is better?” varies. AI is based on algorithms that need more clear criteria than humans do.

AI is overly confident in its conclusions that are based on biased data. So, this is different from humans?

Let’s stop using colors that make slides unreadable to those who have imperfect vision.

The most distressing aspect of public discourse recently is that it has become accepted that folks can make up any “facts” they want and others believe them without question.