Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

"It's hard to teach someone who think they know." Ain't that the truth!

Hey trainers... brains cannot pay attention for as long as you think.

Just because the data exists, it doesn’t mean it’s valuable.

You make decisions based on data. Your data collection and analysis is terrible. What conclusions can we draw about your decisions?

Printing presses made texts stable in ways they were not when transcribed.

"Templates feel like plagiarism." Yeah... they are not :)

"We made the decision and the data are proving we were right."

I would be amazed at the ridiculousness of this statement, but I work in education, so I have heard it for decades.

So much “data-driven” leadership is about certainty, not accuracy.

If nothing will change your conclusion, then you cannot claim to be using evidence... or reason. #leadership

“Organisms suck orderliness out of their environment.” Yup, that’s the fundamental observation of biology.

I’m increasingly convinced that curriculum that is not put in context of problems and life outside of classrooms is an irrelevant waste of time.

“I am endlessly bothered by preventable problems.” Aren't we all!

I wonder what would happen if we nurtured curiosity in all students and recognized they are all teachable (or maybe competent learners rather than teachable)?

I've had very interesting conversations recently with folks who prepare students for very specific work settings. They introduce some of the culture of those settings to their classes, much to the horror of academic professionals.

Real-time problem-solving (e.g. with time constraints and changing circumstances) should be designed into learning settings too.

“Designers who are easily distracted by perceived design flaws.” Yeah, that’s a thing.

Knowing how it is supposed to work and knowing how it fails are very different forms of knowledge, and one may not lead to the other.

Troubleshooting is a very important problem solving skill that is too often ignored in education.

If students don't see your concepts as better than theirs, they won't integrate them into their thinking.

I've always thought teachers who have experience working in the field are less likely to teach "about" it, while they share lots of stories about it.