Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

So much “data-driven” decision-making starts with the decision and then finds the data.

OK… you said we needed rules that everyone followed, so we made them. Now, you are saying you won’t follow them because you don’t like them. 🤦

I work in #edtech. I have found lots of ways to tell folks “that tool that you adore… it really sucks.”

“You can learn it on an app” is evidence you don’t understand human knowledge… or apps.

“AI is biased and inaccurate…” so it’s not so different from humans.

In science, extraordinary claims by individuals are checked and rejected. In politics, they become talking points indefinitely.

Abstruse calculations does not make your idea true.

If you see certainty in your data, you are analyzing it wrong.

Those patterns you see in your data… they may be the result of randomness. How can you tell the difference?

One of my favorite things to do is see the puzzled look when “data-driven” leaders celebrate a positive change, and I ask “might this just be regression to the mean?”

Have you ever noticed the “we need rules and procedures” crowd cannot stand when they are not the people who make the rules?

Yeah, it’s not “unfair” that I don’t take your wacky idea seriously, it’s called “practicing good judgement;” especially when you are dragging out ideas that have been throughly debunked years, decades, or centuries ago.

The number of folks who maintain “I didn’t do it” when using digital systems is alarming. Maybe “digital literacy” should include lessons about the level of tracking (and trackable data) common when using these systems.

“I spent all break making the terrific infographics for my courses. What do you mean alt text?”

#edtech tip of the day: Bold the text in your file before putting the mimeograph blank through your dot matrix printer to be sure all the characters show up.

Empirical evidence. This is what differentiates science from other types of knowledge.

Writing and content generation are different things. One creates something worth reading, the other fills pages.

The longer I work in education, the less confidence I have in the testing we use as a meaningful instrument for… well anything other than filling time and causing stress.

I saw a performance recently in which teachers were portrayed as uncaring. A colleague who knows my background asked, “wasn’t that unfair to teachers?” I responded, “No. It accurately reflected a significant part of the teacher population in with embarrassing accuracy.”

What if we ask folks to add to our culture, not fit into it?