Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

What if your students meet the objectives, but don’t learn anything?

I reject authority… especially when it is a tech company telling me how I should teach.

Do we trust the “AI in education expert” who says “this stuff is changing every day” yet used the same slides and examples they did 3 months ago when you saw them give their talk at a different school?

Wait… let me get this straight… you want to hire someone to translate education jargon? But there are folks whose entire role is to introduce it and confuse others with it. Should we not honor that work?

“This new study proves I’m right.”

“How do you know it isn’t in that majority of studies that are not confirmed?”

Data-driven folks always attribute change to their interventions. It’s almost like the Hawthorne effect, regression to the mean, natural variation, etc. don’t exist.

I had a colleague (she taught 2nd grade) who kept every “new” reading program that came out over her long career. She could always find one that worked for a struggling reader. Very few of her students went to 3rd grade unable to read. Maybe the reading war is misguided?

Doing a Google search is not research… typing it into ChatGPT on the other hand… is really not research.

I like to answer, “how did it go?” with “just as expected” with little emotion in my face. Folks invariably smile… for a moment.

I had a colleague (she taught 2nd grade) who kept every “new” reading program that came out over her long career. She could always find one that worked for a struggling reader. Very few of her students went to 3rd grade unable to read. Maybe the reading war is misguided?

There is “knowing,” but information gathering, decision-making, hypothesis generation, causal reasoning, and critically evaluating all seems as worthy of teaching time as knowing.

I once began an answer to a question in an interview, “Your question seems to assume learning styles are real.” They said, “yes.” The next 3 minutes were fun.

The area where I live consolidated school districts over the last 10 years. Since then, they have hired central office staff who delegate their work to individual schools. Guess what they are trying to do again?

“Let’s do something before this is a crisis” is a sure sign it’s a crisis.

Where are the others who “correct” the memos sent by those teachers who are jerks to students and then post them on the bulletin board in the teachers’ room? I miss doing that.

What if “the standards” are really not what students need to be successful?

Wait a second... Thomas Edison wrote in 1922 that movies were going to replace textbooks? I want all the money back that I spent on textbooks while in college.

Are these folks claiming that AI is conscious confident they can define it clearly? The last time I checked, we are really satisfied with the best definition.

Please prove me wrong.

Faculty may require support from IT professionals when embedding media in virtual classrooms to help minimize students’ exposure to advertisements.

"Great infographic. It needs alternative text."

"But, I spent all afternoon making them for the end of the semester. Do I need to make alternative text for all of them?"

"Yes. Yes, you do."