Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

The natural sciences are based on a simple approach to answering questions:
- Holding everything in the environment constant, expect for one variable.
- Changing the one variable in for one group of “things”
- Measuring whatever “growth” or change that interests you.
- Ascribing any changes to the one variable.

Data-driven folks like to think they do the same. They don’t.

A student once told me: "The tests are the most important part of what you do in school. This is the data that is most important about you. What we do in class otherwise is just for fun and to give you a break from the real work of answering questions on the computer."

A Response to Standard Education
https://hackscience.education/2019/07/18/a-response-to-standard-education/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is just the opposite of what we observe in humans’ use of technology; as humans invent technologies, they redefine what is necessary.

It is an unfortunate reality that many who are the strongest advocates for practices are the least able to react to it in a critical manner.

I made this video about 11 years ago for a MOOC in which I participated.
https://bit.ly/3wmrIAh

Technologies exist at many levels and so must be understood and evaluated at many levels.

Every technology comprises other technologies.

A word of advice… don’t tell IT (or other folks always understaffed and overworked) that your project needs to be a high priority because “I’m going on vacation.”

“The central purpose of technologies has not been to provide necessities, such as food and shelter, for humans had achieved these goals very early in their existence." David Nye

Here is a reminder to state the opinions upon which you base your facts.

I dropped a new episode of my podcast Appropriate Proper Reasonable. Season 1 episode 9 focuses on natural technology.
https://bit.ly/3J0jtfP

If your technology folks are getting *and following* direction from those who interct with users more than tech, then you are wasting you money on the technology.

One thing I learned during 35 years in education: Some educators went into the business for the wrong reasons.

Schools are perpetually beginning new practices, and none is ever allowed to have deep influences on pedagogy and student experiences.

Hey leaders... we see through your spin... and you loose credibility the more you do it.

If it wasn't for illogical arguments, some folks would have none at all.

The first step used to be understand the other, now it is create a straw man.

Government agencies, politicians, and philanthropists are all much more influential in determining educational policy and practice than they were in previous generations.

AI makes up some pretty trite saying, but some are actaully spot-on: “Critical thinking is the compass of intellect; without it, we are merely wanderers in the land of opinions.”