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
Your IT team has folks with lots of different specialties. You don’t realize that. Your IT team doesn’t realize the specialized work of IT users either.
There is an interesting phenomenon that is observed in the human brain. It adapts to what it experiences as it grows through adolescence. Those experiences become what we expect of everyone, regardless of their formative experiences.
In the journal that I kept when I was a student teacher in 1988, I recorded the advice of one of the teachers in whose class I taught, “Every few years, whenever they buy new textbooks, you have to go back through your plans and update them.” I can't imagine waiting *years* to update classes anymore.
Effective teaching accepts a greater role for sources of information and expertise that arise from outside the classroom.
Top-down, standardized curriculum and test-dominated assessment makes classrooms irrelevant to students.
Whereas teachers and textbook authors were presumed to be authorities in previous classrooms, in digital classrooms, collective credibility is built as learners reconcile disparate evidence and points of view.
Learning is social knowledge-building rather than individual cognition.
Technology changes rapidly, so one must have the ability to adopt and adapt to new sources of information and interaction.
Just as other institutions have become flexible and responsive to emerging technology and social expectations, schools will become flexible and responsive.... or they will go away.
Information technology provides the capacity to develop any curriculum and provide it to any size group of learners... well some types of curriculum.
Did you ever solve a problem, then realize it wasn't the problem after all.
I've worked with some IT folks who came to schools from business. When I told them some users can't read or write, they were flabergasted. More than one have exclaimed, "well, that's not my problem." Yeah... it really is.
An Observation on Education and Politics
https://hackscience.education/2019/08/05/an-observation-on-education-and-politics/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
The whole real is greater than the sum of the parts... sometimes.
Data can become evidence only if it is reliable.
I am the kind of person who has switched jobs often... for many reasons. It is surprising the number of people who think there is something wrong with me because I do.
Admitting that you plans suck is the first step. Unfortunately, many don't take it.
- 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
