Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Charles Darwin wrote, “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, and blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature.”

I frequent a media web site of interest. Recently, the publishers noted a “significant redesign” of the site. That redesign was the addition of advertising widgets.

Schools are perpetually beginning new practices, and none is ever allowed to have deep influences on pedagogy and student experiences. A colleague who is a known cynic commented on the horizontal reform we see in schools and observed, “It is probably best that none of these horizontal reforms ever gain traction. I have never seen any that is as effective as they claim.” #edutoots

Educational paradigms that focus on instruction and measure achievement with standardized tests are naïve and ignore the facts of human nature and the skills necessary for full participation in the emerging culture.
#edutoot

Teachers, faculties, schools, and the entire education system will be prepared for digital generations only when educators accept the challenge of reinventing (and continuing to reinvent) their practice. #edutoot

Compared to IT users in business, IT users in schools are much different. They bring different skills to the IT they use, they need more flexibility more often than business users, and their needs change over time. These characteristics arise from the facts that students have emerging literacies; it is not unusual for primary grade students to be only learning to read and the keyboard is new to them, so many computer interfaces and unput options (such as typing) may be very difficult for students to use. Even with clear curriculum guidelines, teacher and students may have different information and computing needs than they had previously or different from those of teachers and students in similar courses. School years are also periodic. Just when all the elementary school students are becoming familiar with the technology and they are becoming facile using it, the school year ends, and teachers (and IT professionals) must prepare for a new group of technology newcomers.

In 2017, a librarian and I were cleaning out a cabinet and found an old CD containing “Oregon Trail.” Even though the disk indicated it was for Windows 98, we tried installing it on a Windows 7 PC, and it worked. A middle school teacher heard our excitement and took the disk to use in his classes. “My students are so going to write journals of their trips, just like I did!” he explained.

When humans have important experiences, such as we have in school (either as a youngster or a parent), those will bias our beliefs about the experience for others. We assume everyone’s experience in school was like ours. (It was not—even for classmates.) We assume that everyone should learn what we learned and how we learned it. (This may be true, but it may not be true.) As a result, many adults pursue work in schools with the intent of replicating the structures and instruction they experienced, but that may not be what all students need.

The fact that “infodemic” is a thing is really distressing.

One thing I learned during 35 years in education: “facts” are the least useful thing in the curriculum.

How much of your learning was teaching “at scale” (done in large cohorts)? While it was effective for content, that was the least important part of my education.

We are initiating a project to create a digital collection of the rocks, minerals, and fossils, in our community college's collection. We are thinking a searchable database (mobile compatible) that will display images of what we have.

Anyone willing to share recommendations on platforms?

We have capacity to self-host, prefer open source.

No new multimedia package since HyperCard has been an improvement.

There really are two sides of science-based debates.

Can we agree this is a terrible place to put the key that returns the cursor to the left side of the line (on an English keyboard)?

In IT the problems are solvable. We can adopt systematic troubleshooting steps and most problems can be identified and resolved in minutes or a few hours. (Yes, I have problems that extended much longer—all IT professionals have—but those tend to be rare.) IT professionals have knowledge of the systems they manage, and they have resources (from online communities, colleagues, vendors, and even user manuals) to help them resolve unfamiliar problems. When their problems are solved, all users can recognize the green LED’s that signal functioning connections, operational computers, and—in schools—smiling teachers.

I expect every reader has experience with school and a strong concept of school. Much that one “knows” about school, however, is a misconception.

I once served on a committee hiring a professional who was primarily going to serve as network administrator. We were in the second interview, so there were fewer questions and more discussions, and he asked, “What can you tell me about the environment?” The superintendent (who admitted little knowledge of technology) began describing efforts they had made to improve the working climate in the schools. He looked puzzled as he listened for several minutes. When she paused to take a breath, I interrupted, “I think he was asking about the network environment?” He said, “yes, I’m glad to have heard that, but I was asking about the servers and stuff.” Sometimes IT professionals and educators are not even speaking the same language even when they use the same word.

So, I was helping a faculty member prepare their exam to import into the LMS. I noticed and pointed out "you only give 'all of the above' as a choice when it is the correct answer." They dismissed my suggestion we change it.

This is a faculty member who vehemently insists tests are the best way to measure learning.