Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Einstein said, “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

Yeah, he was right

Sometimes I wish folks would spend as much time planning, editing, and reviewing their graphs as they do their text.

Yeah, I heard what you said, but your actions were much louder.

Let’s not conflate remembering (which we enhance via interleaving, spaced practice, etc.) with “knowing,” “understanding,” or “able to use elsewhere.”

Infographics are fine, but I always wonder about accessibility. How do we alt-text them? How do we convince folks to convey the information in non-graphic format too?

“This was meaningful for me, thus it should be meaningful for you” is one of the weakest rationales.

“Ours is a checklist culture….”

I can’t disagree.

I don’t believe fiction deserves the exclusive claim to transforming readers some seem to believe it deserves.

I read nonfiction. I see myself and the world differently when I finish a really well-written and insightful book.

Reading is more that getting info off a page. Writing is more than putting it there. Math is more than manipulating numbers. Technology is more than coding.

To collect data without a clear question to be answered, appropriate analysis methods identified, and reporting plans in place (not to mention informed consent) is unethical.

Being skeptical and denying reality are different approaches to the world.

I’m always in awe of the foolishness of those “experts” who think they know other fields better than those experts.

Our town has been targeted for a mass mailing of religious propaganda. I opened the book randomly and read three sentences. I’m a pretty good reader, but I could not make sense of any of the sentences.

If you can’t identify data that would prove you wrong, you are not really data-driven.

My hunch based on my experience teaching other fields and hanging out with skilled reading teachers for a few decades… is that there is no one single approach that teaches the diverse set of skills we call reading.

Your goals and your students’ goals are likely not the same.

If we didn’t believe the pattern existed in the data, we wouldn’t see it.

I attended class in which teachers wrote text on boards. Now I see video of it and I really don’t see that as an effective or efficient strategy.

Reading Jared Diamond confirms that one cannot look to “primitive society” for any answers. Their cultural practices vary… some depending on circumstances, some (seemingly) depending on whim.

Challenging conventional thinking and denying it are different things. One move it closer to reality, the other further from it.