Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Human knowledge is as much a social activity as it is a cognitive activity. We can understand and learn alone, but we are better at it when we do it together. Much better.

A blog post on multiple working hypotheses now with audio:
https://www.hackscience.education/on-multiple-working-hypotheses/

Too often teachers simply repeat their original explanation, only slower, in hopes that students will understand things that confuse them. The word "them" at the end of that sentence can refer either to the student or the teacher.

I have an uncommon ability to phrase questions in ways leaders cannot avoid them. It annoys them.

If you claim a method works “like magic,” I’m not going to take you seriously. I might look closer at the method, but I’m not interested in your assessment.

Heutagogy. Educators who don’t make space and time for it are missing an opportunity to make school relevant.

Being a teacher who is and understands research findings and is competent using them means you needs to keep quiet when school leaders advocate "quacky" ideas.

If folks are leaving your organization and you express surprise, then you are probably not paying attention.

"These data are objective" is a sign they are not.

A single test score does not tell us anything interesting or useful.

Real data-driven folks understand that all measurements contain error.

Scientists are always specific about what they are measuring, and there are accepted methods for measuring these quantities. Education is not the same.

I graduated from high school and started my preparation to be an educator in 1983. That is the year A Nation at Risk was released. "Schools are failing" is not new.

Before ordering books, one should check their bookshelves.

I work in #edtech. I spend half of my time giving step-by-step directions for using tools and half of my time having those directions be ignored.

“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

Adults are trying to improve schools by looking towards their past; “what worked for me will work for them,” is the misguided reasoning.

If education was simply an engineering problem, it would have been solved decades ago.

It seems educators cannot make any decision without some test scores to support it, and we can take no action unless it is going to result in some change that can be measured on a test.

Education is a technology that is built upon the natural phenomena of the human brain. Unfortunately, many who affect schools no nothings of how brains really work.