111: Should Educators Judge Initiatives? At several times during my career I have found myself in a rather uncomfortable situation: I was philosophically opposed to initiatives being undertaken by the school leaders. Specific situations I remember include: The decision to replace good middle school practice with a junior high school model; The decision to replace Read More
So, the word has come out that Google+ will be shutting down. I can’t say this is going to have any affect on my digital life. I have (had) a G+ account, but found little there that wasn’t other places and the community did little to help me (of course, I did little to help Read More
In my explorations of math education this fall, I have been encountering a wide range of resources for math teachers. Many list such a wide range of problems, resources, and tools that even a good search strategy is not helpful in finding the items that are unique to the site. Open Middle is a site Read More
Unfortunately, many educators are unaware of the importance of ensuing the files they create (documents, spreadsheets, presentation) comply with the standards defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In general, ADA compliant files are more accessible to users with disabilities than those that are not. These files, for example, are structured to facilitate interpretation Read More
I am a fan of easy to use and effective technology tools. I am also one who values visual displays of data. BoxPlotR fits both of my criteria. Upload a CSV file or copy and paste CSV data, and BoxPlotR will create a box plot for you and find an display other summary statistics. The Read More
112: Naturalistic Approaches to Research and Teaching In their seminal book on Naturalistic inquiry, Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba (1985) argued that much scientific research is based on a reduction of the problem according to positivist principles, and that those assumptions are increasingly insufficient to describe many problems in the social sciences, including education. Whereas, Read More
109: Why Standardized Testing Flopped In the fall of 2018, an article appeared in my news feed multiple times. Peter Greene, a contributor to Forbes magazine posed the question “Is The Big Standardized Test A Big Standardized Flop?” in the title of his article. No educator (or parent, or higher education professional, or employer) is Read More
110: A Disturbing Observation I recently visited a classroom in which there were two activities planned for the day. First, students were gathering data that is to be used to answer the question “Is anyone average?” Second, the students were completing some standardized tests which are part of the school’s assessment plan. While the measuring Read More
Many species live in social groups and interaction within those groups is well-known. In humans, however, social life takes on a level of complexity and sophistication that far exceeds what is observed in other social species. Michael Gazzaniga (2008), a noted neuroscientist who has studied human brains for decades, concluded “the shift to becoming highly Read More
(Please forgive the male pronouns in this post… the individuals featured in it all identify as male and prefer make pronouns, so I used that convention.) A school leader who is working on his dissertation asked me to give him some feedback on his project. He was defining his research question which focused on Read More