62: Progressive Discourse | RSS.com As a wicked problem, the process of education—and thus the planning for education—appears different depending on many personal and societal factors that influences one’s perspective. (Stakeholder groups are commonly identified to categorize those with different perspectives on education; but that does not capture the individualized nature of one’s perspective, nor Read More
In the vernacular, “theory” is associated with ideas that are incomplete or not necessarily true. Among educators, and other pragmatic professionals such as technologists, theory is often associated with unrealistic or idealistic thinking that has little connection to her or his work The interpretations of theory are unfortunate, however, as theory can inform and focus Read More
There has always been something suspicious to me about “learning styles.” As teachers, we are supposed vary our delivery, so that each student can learn through the style that works best for the individual. The idea seemed too simple, and it seemed that it did not really explain what I observed with my students. “Learning Read More
Is is fast approaching that time in the semester when students are asking questions about providing references in APA format and they are confused by the capitalization rules. I have made this set of flow charts available to my students for a few years… perhaps others can use them as well. You can see there Read More
I have been reviewing Technology-Rich Instruction: Classrooms in the 21st Century, my book that was published in 2015 and discovering how much of it seems dated. (This observation is despite my desire to write a book that would inform teachers and education leaders for longer than the typical 6-18 months we can expect from a Read More
In 1644, John Milton composed a pamphlet in which he argues for freedom of expression; areopagitica has been adopted as a term to describe the capacity for individual to compose and distribute any ideas they see fit. Digital tools, especially those called Web 2.0 tools have been interpreted as the realization of areopagetica and students Read More
“Data” has been widely, but imprecisely, used in education for most of the 21st century. Data-driven educators make decisions based on information they have gathered about their students’ performance. Ostensibly, this is done in an attempt to adopt the position of a researcher and to ground decisions in objective research, thus give more support for Read More
This is an initial draft… as time allows, I will continue to develop this post. John Dewey identified four natural impulses of children: to inquiry to communicate to construct to express For experiences to be educative, he reasoned, they must allow students to follow these impulses. If we hold these to be true, and there Read More
Appropriate Proper Reasonable Reflexivity was originally used to describe the effects of social science researchers on the situations they were studying; the presence of researchers affects the behavior of subjects, thus the observations made. More recently, the term has been used to describe the influence of ICT on how people use information and how they Read More
Appropriate Proper Reasonable Computers and information technologies have an interesting characteristic: We can use it to be more efficient in our work, but getting to that point requires a temporary decrease in efficiency. We can illustrate this with this picture: When we are using a “primitive” technology, we must exert a certain (and familiar) level Read More