Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

“We’ve got to get through the curriculum.” 🤦‍♂️

Sometimes I make up acronyms and use them in meetings. Try it sometimes, it’s fun.

“Brainstorming sessions” often stop when the leader hears the answer they want.

“Teach students to think critically” is often espoused by those who hold some pretty wacky ideas.

Conspiracies exist. That is not proof every conspiracy theory is true.

Heck, we couldn’t even get folks to create Boolean searches, what makes you think we can get them to be prompt engineers?

“Don’t believe everything you are told.”

The problem is we’ve generally lost our individual and collective capacity to judge the quality of information.

I work in #edtech. I spend half of my time answering requests to change default settings from x to y and the other half asking me to change them from y to x.

"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." - Isaac Asimov

"If I don't see it, then it isn't true" doesn't make you an empiricist.

“Anyone who is drunk with gadgets is a menace.” -C. P. Snow

Paraphrasing Ashley Montagu : For science, certainty is elusive, but exploration is constant.

That chaos in your organization. It is planned.

My wife is in a support position in a school. A few years ago, she observed a “problem child.” My wife told educators “I don't think they can can’t see,” but was summarily dismissed. The child returned to school the following year with glasses. Guess who was no longer a "problem child?"

When I speak with young folks, I’m optimistic about the future. When I talk to folks my age, I’m not so optimistic.

Humans learn from sound, motion, faces.

One thing I learned during 35 years in education: Our lessons aren’t that great. Update. Revise. Refresh. They will get better.

Open cultures support creative outputs. It may seem counterintuitive, but it has been demonstrated.

“Generative AI. The information may not be factual, but it is there.” Seems a low bar to me.

“We came from monkeys” is proof your comments about biology do not warrant attention.