Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Can we agree to stop drawing unlabeled arrows between clumps of words and calling it a graphic?

When I taught math, I never used a teacher edition of the text. Students and I got into discussions about the correct answer to some problems.

My special skill is recognizing when “brainstorming” is really “guess what the leader is thinking.”

“Man’s efforts to know himself are often frustrated by his propensity to deceive himself.”

-Theodosius Dobzhansky

When colleagues can’t do math, and they have an important Zoom meeting:

“I’ve got a back injury right now, I can only sit at my desk for 15 minutes at a time.”

“Great, we only need you for the first 30 minutes.”

Yes, it’s true. Teachers cannot always predict what students will learn during a lesson.

I’ve always found those who truly “understand” concepts are not bothered by ambiguous definitions at any level. They know we make some progress, reach our limit, then dig in again.

Are learning outcomes used to guide learning or manage educators?

Note to school administrators: if your new data comes from teachers filling out forms, you data are incomplete. Very incomplete.

I'm considering charlatan as my retirement career. All I have to do is figure out the fraud that will be most lucrative as I don't want to work very hard.

Einstein said, “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

Yeah, he was right

Sometimes I wish folks would spend as much time planning, editing, and reviewing their graphs as they do their text.

Yeah, I heard what you said, but your actions were much louder.

Let’s not conflate remembering (which we enhance via interleaving, spaced practice, etc.) with “knowing,” “understanding,” or “able to use elsewhere.”

Infographics are fine, but I always wonder about accessibility. How do we alt-text them? How do we convince folks to convey the information in non-graphic format too?

“This was meaningful for me, thus it should be meaningful for you” is one of the weakest rationales.

“Ours is a checklist culture….”

I can’t disagree.

I don’t believe fiction deserves the exclusive claim to transforming readers some seem to believe it deserves.

I read nonfiction. I see myself and the world differently when I finish a really well-written and insightful book.

Reading is more that getting info off a page. Writing is more than putting it there. Math is more than manipulating numbers. Technology is more than coding.

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.