Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org
- On the web:
- https://hackscience.education/
Director of Teaching and Learning Innovation at a community college in New England
Retired k-12 science/ math/ technology teacher/ technology integration specialist/ coordinator
Joined Nov 2022
“Education is a long, slow, uncertain process….” Some folks have it right. Even in 1970, they had it right.
“Individuals’ brains are critically shaped by social relationships, and the information they learn through these relationships supports both their emotions and their knowledge about facts, procedures, motivation, and interests."
I predict teachers will become mentors and coaches. They will give advice and direction on techniques of learning rather than providers of information.
I predict formal education will become more important, but traditional schools will become less important.
“Effective schools” is a nebulous term. We could define schools in which students earn top scores on standardized tests as effective; likewise, we could define schools in which students write cogent essays (or create paintings, music, and dance) expounding the evils of standardized tests as effective.
Previously, educators and scholar presumed learners were “blank slates” when they arrived in classrooms, and teachers began to transfer the necessary information with little concern over what was already there.
My advice to school leaders is to stop listening to the policy-makers who would have you shirk your duties to prepare your students for their future and society’s future.
By including participation, engagement, flexibility, adaptability, and similar soft skills in our assessment and evaluation of students we are communicating to them these are valuable skills to develop. By removing these from their evaluation, educators are ignoring the most important skills students can develop.
One thing I learned in 35 years in education: I know that many teachers only want to teach those who don’t need to be taught.
I am a cynic when hearing complaints. I know that employers who offer low wages are going to attract the least well-prepared individuals.
The natural sciences are based on a simple approach to answering questions:
- Holding everything in the environment constant, expect for one variable.
- Changing the one variable in for one group of “things”
- Measuring whatever “growth” or change that interests you.
- Ascribing any changes to the one variable.
Data-driven folks like to think they do the same. They don’t.
A student once told me: "The tests are the most important part of what you do in school. This is the data that is most important about you. What we do in class otherwise is just for fun and to give you a break from the real work of answering questions on the computer."
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is just the opposite of what we observe in humans’ use of technology; as humans invent technologies, they redefine what is necessary.
It is an unfortunate reality that many who are the strongest advocates for practices are the least able to react to it in a critical manner.
I made this video about 11 years ago for a MOOC in which I participated.
https://bit.ly/3wmrIAh
Technologies exist at many levels and so must be understood and evaluated at many levels.
- On the web:
- https://hackscience.education/
Director of Teaching and Learning Innovation at a community college in New England
Retired k-12 science/ math/ technology teacher/ technology integration specialist/ coordinator
Joined Nov 2022
