Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

A blog post for students studying for the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam focusing on security;
https://hackscience.education/2025/10/09/aws-security/

Agency. We all want and need it in some part of our lives.

When you recognize contingency and randomness affect all decisions an outcomes you are beginning to be qualified to be a leader.

If you post, “research shows,” but you don’t reference it, I assume you are making it up.

Agency. We all want and need it in some part of our lives.

If you are giving 0 for not handing work in, then you are giving participation grades.

Education is about changing humans. When our students leave our classrooms, we expect they can do things, see things, and think things they could not before the class. If our students leave with their abilities unchanged, then they (and we) have wasted their time and energy.

Don’t be that innovation coach who only recommends things you did before becoming a coach.

The degree to which flexibility characterizes effective classrooms is overlooked in my opinion.

Especially in education, long-standing practices have not necessarily proven better than the others.

Education is about changing humans. When our students leave our classrooms, we expect they can do things, see things, and think things they could not before the class. If our students leave with their abilities unchanged, then they (and we) have wasted their time and energy.

My blog post reviewing Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
tl;dr Read this book! Seriously, read it.
https://hackscience.education/2025/10/08/review-of-code-dependent-living-in-the-shadow-of-ai/

Did you ever notice those emails to "clarify the process" rarely do?

I work in IT. I spent all day reminding people we stopped using that system years ago.

One thing I learned during 30 years in education: while you are focusing on improving one thing, another becomes a crisis.

“There is a free tier” isn’t “open source.”

Classroom grades reflect one’s capacity to succeed in a social hierarchical situation. Let’s recognize that and teachers’ biases… it easier to call them out as they can’t hide behind “objectivity.”

Your data… that “evidence your interventions work" may well be the Hawthorne Effect.

I work in IT. I spend all days watching spinning icons.

Abandon topics and outcomes to focus lesson. Use questions or problems instead. It will improve your teaching and students’ learning.