Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

“We need to teach our children what science is and how it works.” -Niles Eldridge

You know that solar system thing with sun, planets, and all? That is a theory. Funny how few people dismiss it as “just a theory.”

Can You? Really?
https://hackscience.education/2019/12/03/can-you-really/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

“We therefore give the word 'intelligence' to this wondrously complex and multifaceted set of human capabilities. This shorthand symbol is then reified and intelligence achieves a dubious status as a unitary thing” -- Stephen Jay Gould

On Student Users https://hackscience.net/2024/07/11/on-student-users/

All disputes in science are resolved by evidence and observation, and evidence and observation must follow the rules of logic. It just takes some time.

"Scientists, being as a rule more or less human beings, passionately stick up for their ideas, their pet theories. It's up to someone else to show you are wrong.".--Niles Eldredge

Science requires one admit there are unknowns. I think that’s one reason folks reject it.

The concept of the “blank slate” has been discredited among philosophers, psychologist, and other scientists for several decades, but many educators continue to assume students arrive in classrooms with no relevant experiences and that students need only pay sufficient attention to learn the information teachers tell them.

Training vs. Education
https://hackscience.education/2019/12/01/training-vs-education/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Learning comprises many different types of abilities and actions. Our teaching and assessment should reflect that reality.

When I was an undergraduate student, I believed one could be taught how to teach.

Perhaps the most ridiculous myth that we (and this is a collective we that comprises educators, curriculum experts, employers, politicians, and book authors) believe is that we know what our students will need to know in the future.

Schools have always been places that prepare students to participate in the information ecologies they will enter (these may be general societies or communities of specialists). Today, these are physical places, online spaces, organizations, and cultures where digital tools dominate.

What Gould Wrote About Intelligence
https://hackscience.education/2019/11/29/what-gould-wrote-about-intelligence/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

When I first started in education, computers were a marginal tool. Literally, they were in a back corner of the classroom and used for special purposes. Over time, they became more central to the curriculum and in the teaching spaces.

Paraphrasing Jaron Lanier: Technology begins with human hands, but human speech plans what the hands will do.

When one thing gets easier, something else gets harder.

A feeling is not a fact. It It might be.... but there needs to be evidence.

While we might be able to calculate the percent of points students earn on an assignment, it is difficult to conclude that we know confidently that a student who scores 90% really knows 1% more of the total than the student who scored 89%.