Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

“We must have have gadflies... to remind us constantly that our usual preferences, channels, and biases are not inevitable modes of thought.” -Stephen Jay Gould

Tolstoy suggested Malthus demonstrated “malicious mediocrity.” That is a wonderfully sharp criticism.

“I don’t have kids, so I shouldn’t pay for schools” is as sound as “my house isn’t on fire, so I should not have to pay for fire fighters.”

Life-long learning is no longer optional.

A blog post for network security students.
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/04/penetration-testing/

How do we support IT use among faculty?
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/06/on-professional-development-models-for-edtech/

T. H. Huxley wrote, “battles, like hypotheses, are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.”

“Nature does not exist for our delectation, our moral instruction, or our pleasure. Therefore, nature will not always(or even preferentially) match our hopes.” -Stephen Jay Gould

If you can explain everything, you can explain nothing.

Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. - Stephen Jay Gould

Learners with a deeper understanding of themselves will be better equipped to deal with rapid change that we are experiencing.

We need teaching and allows learners to adapts. Teaching that delivers facts is no longer sufficient .

Technology offers new possibilities, but demands on learners are accelerating.

A brief blog post on how social factors affect IT decisions :
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/05/social-influences-on-technology-decisions/

Purposeful, meaningful, challenging, engaging are four adjectives I see and hear applied to curriculum we should be designing. I don’t hear them applied by #students often enough. #highschool #HigherEducation #highered

“We live in a profoundly nonintellectual culture, made all the worse by a passive hedonism abetted by the spread of wealth and its dissipation into countless electronic devices that impart the latest in entertainment and supposed information....”. Gould had that correct!

We are bombarded with too much [information] in our inordinately complex world; if we cannot sort the trivial from the profound,we are lost in terminal overload. -Stephen Jay Gould

Stasis is the norm for complex systems; change, when provoked at all, is usually rapid and episodic. -Stephen Jay Gould

I’ve concluded leaders who recommend, “staying in your lane,” are not worth following.

When your protocols limit meaningful interaction, it is time to abandon them. #teaching #edchat #education