Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Another Reflection on Leaving Teaching
https://hackscience.education/2019/05/21/another-reflection-on-leaving-teaching/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Expect young people to question you and ask “why?”

If that bothers you... I'm just going to stare at you trying to figure out what you problem is.

I tell my students they must write down their passwords. I do not secure the paper and some one takes it and uses the passwords for nefarious purposes. (OK, this is hypothetical!)

Am I responsible for the breech?

What actions should school and IT leaders take?

A credible network administrator will never ask you for your password; if one does simply say “no.”

"Collect only the data you need. Measuring affects what will be observed in all systems. Too much measuring makes further measurements unreliable." Great advice for the "data driven" folks.

"Obtain informed consent. If you don’t know what this is, then you have no business gathering or analyzing data." Truer words are rarely encountered.

What Leaders say about Iterative Design
https://hackscience.education/2019/05/21/what-leaders-say-about-iterative-design/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”
― John Dewey

“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.”
― John Dewey

What I learned during 35 years in education: " For the students" rarely is.

Educators are very familiar with the never-ending series of “buzz words” that emerge, capture the attention of leaders for a few years, then fade into disuse when the next term distracts leaders. Each of these is presented as a panacea for whatever ails education; advocates argue it will finally return our students to the top of the heap (whatever that might mean).

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams - and have the technology to make them real." Yeah... let's not rely on AI for insightful commentary .

On the Value of Theories
https://hackscience.education/2019/05/20/on-the-value-of-theories/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Internet access. Everyone who wants it, should have it for free.

On things I learned during 35 years in education: Every "this will change everything" method (and I mean every single one) did not.

Interesting brief podcast on jigsaw, a group reading protocol.
https://rss.com/podcasts/teachinglearninginnovation/1416515/

The nature of physical things is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming gradually into existence, than they are only considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state. - Descartes

Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.” -John Dewey

"We are going to study x" is code for "we are changing it to what I want, but everyone is going to waste 6 months talking about it."

Some ideas are very tiresome. The anthropic principle is one of them.