Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

A View of Technology
https://hackscience.education/2019/05/29/a-view-of-technology/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The reality for educators is that no recipe will work for all students in all areas (or even for the same students on different days). Educators must constantly reinvent their curriculum and instruction as students, learning science, and pedagogical tools change.

Despite the widespread belief that "what worked for me will work for everyone,” there are many many variables that affect how one experiences a classroom and how those experiences will change a student's ability to interact with information and with other humans in the future.

The rate of replacement of one technology with another led to the situation where I can show teachers how to use new devices at the beginning of the school year and new devices before the end of the school year.

As an undergraduate student enrolled in a course on teaching methods, I made an appointment with the staff at a small media office and had them sign a sheet confirming that I successfully threaded a film strip into a projector and had operated a video cassette recorder.

"Different problems require different approaches." Yeah...unfortunately many leaders do not realize this.

If the curriculum is “too easy” or “too hard,” students pay little attention and make little progress. When the curriculum is “just right,” students “get it.” When we standardize education, we ignore this reality of learning.

The most flawed educational proposals proceed from the position that education is an engineering problem, and thus we can build educational systems that produce measurable achievement reliably.

I am increasingly intolerant of those who continue to improve schools through old tired ideas that or those that ignore what we know about teaching and learning.

When teachers do the most work in classrooms….

Learning is a vastly more complex phenomenon than is allowed in the popular culture and in many classrooms.

The imposition of one’s preferred method of instruction on all teachers in all subjects who teach all populations of students is something school leaders should avoid. They don't, but they should.

Long division is a technology... its is a soft technology... but a technology nonetheless. There is nothing special about it, except that you were taught it when we did not have better technology.

Education is reluctant to accept that humans vary.

It is the questions, not the clickers. #edtech

Maybe we start asking what can AI do that we can’t? It seems that is the really useful thing we have done with technology.

If human brains create consciousness through electrical activity in neural circuits, why is it unreasonable to think it can result from similar activity in silicon circuits?

Know that is pretty boring. Know how is more interesting.

Let’s Diversify Computer Education
https://hackscience.net/2024/04/06/lets-diversify-computer-education/

One of the most surprising realizations for adults who begin working in schools is that what is taught is not what they were taught or what they think should be taught.