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Albert Schweitzer said, “Our age has discovered how to divorce knowledge from thought….”

He died in the year I was born; I haven’t grown a non-grey hair on my head for decades.

The ranting we are seeing is not new.

There is a sub population of educators who are content teaching and testing whatever they are directed to. There is another sub population that is critical of standard curriculum.

It’s interesting to me how each is unaware of the other.

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.

I'm amazed at the number of "data-driven leaders" who do not understand this.

i've been in search of resources to update the collection of sites/ resources I use to share with those who ask. I do not include items with ads. Some otherwise excellent resources are excluded.

Educators’ technology needs tend to be different from those encountered in other businesses and industries. Educators generally value flexible systems that allow them to assess the usefulness of software, sites, and services; and to respond to new discoveries and changing expectations quickly. Students who are just learning to read and write often find complicated systems difficult to use. Technicians experienced in designing secure systems that provide predictable and stable access can find these needs of educational populations to be contrary to their expertise.

Daniel Dennett wrote, “We’d better see what can be done to help people get over their delusion.” He used it in a specific context, but it sure seems apt in many contexts today.

One reason educators are reluctant to change is they interpret change as “what I’ve been doing isn’t good.”

Real life is on-going, open ended, uncertain. Laboratories and classrooms are not.

It we could engineer schools that “work,” we already would have done it. The reality is that learning and being “smart” are multifaceted, complex, context-dependent, and changing. When we engineer for one part, everyone complains we’ve missed the others.

After attending a seance, Charles Darwin said, “The Lord have mercy on us all, if we believe in such rubbish.”

@garyackerman It is also very important that there is a good relationship with the teacher. And that in general one understands the meaning of school practice.

Teachers complain. They complain a lot. No, really. You can’t imagine the things teachers say about students, colleagues, administrators, parents, and everyone else. When I hear their complaints now, I may nod, but it is like white noise to me; with one exception. When I hear, “I taught it, but they didn’t learn it” I pay attention. I want to know who said it; I want to remember that person and I accept the challenge they unknowingly made to me to help them better understand what it means to teach.

Blumenfield, Kempler, and Krajcik (2006) suggest engagement in grounded in four factors:

Value- Learners tend to be engaged with material and lessons they believe are important to them. Value is also closely related to motivation, interest, and goals, all of which are addressed in the next section.

Competence- Learners tend to engage in activities they believe are within their abilities. Competence is grounded in one’s knowledge, their metacognitive abilities and their self-efficacy.

Relatedness- Learners tend to be engaged when they feel positive social connection to their peers.

Autonomy- Learners tend to be engaged when they can exercise choice about what they will study and their plan of study.

Blumenfield, P., Kempler, T., & Krajcik, J. (2006). Motivation and cognitive engagement in learning environments. In R. Keith Sawyer (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learning Science, (pp. 475-488). Cambridge University Press.

I'm in the middle of writing a new essay, and there was one awkward paragraph that I just couldn't seem to fix. Eventually I realized it was because the underlying idea was wrong, and that the real solution was to delete it.

This often happens. Trying to make the sentences perfect is not as shallow an undertaking as it sounds. It also exposes the bad ideas.

Inert knowledge can be understood as knowledge that is meaningful only within the classroom. Whatever is learned is relevant only to problems and situations framed and solved in the context of the class and within the boundaries of the class. Many teachers defend this approach to education from the position that they must teach information first. “How can students use the information,” they reason, “until they know it?” Whitehead would respond, “The mind is never passive…. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it." When learning is assumed to be the transfer of information, we approach students minds as passive, and passive minds do not learn.

We have all experienced the change in our brains we call learning. We become capable of remembering information, performing actions, recognizing patterns, appreciating observations, asking questions, and otherwise interacting with ideas, tools, and people in a way we could not previously. Becoming aware of and evaluating our capabilities is learning as well. The many processes mentioned in this paragraph can be labeled cognition, and learning is about improving our cognitive abilities.

Look at your organization's IT.

Does it's use closely aligned with strategic goals?
Is it functioning... like does it really work well?
Is it sustainable given financial and personnel resources?

The answers are often "no" when looking at schools.

You would think the algorithm would have learned by now that when I type chappenge, I mean challenge. Yes, I know, I could ass it to the autocorrect rules, but with all of the machine learning, I figured it'd be automatic by now.

The faculty member is mislead by the textbook vendor… and the LMS administrator at their school is to blame.

In the absence of technology, knowledge can only be shared as far as the human voice can travel. Transporting the knowledge a greater distance requires the human brain that contains the information be transported to the new location.

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