Quantification of knowledge has a dubious history. Stephen Jay Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man described the disturbing history of intelligence testing in the 20th century, the rocky science upon which it is based, and the on-going unjustified application of it in education and public policy. In this post, I consider the quantification of knowledge Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
#edtech for #edleaders: Reasonable Implementation
School boards hire superintendents and other high-level administrators to make the ultimate decisions about what happens in the school. These leaders are charged with ensuring all decisions, including those related to appropriate design and proper configuration of IT systems are reasonable. Reasonableness is defined by: Budgets—All decisions must fall within the available budgets and the Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Appropriate Design
Schools are places where learning is supposed to occur. Educators, including teachers and curriculum leaders, are the professionals who are responsible for defining what should be taught. They are also responsible for deciding how it will be taught. These comprise curriculum and instruction decisions. While many curriculum and instruction decisions are made for lessons that Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Properly Configured IT
It is the role of the IT professionals to ensure that technology is properly configured to both provide the services educators need, plus reflect the responsible configuration of the system. Remember, we do not want IT professionals running schools and we do not want educators to be running IT systems. Proper configuration of the IT Read More
Thinking About Schools
We are working at a moment in history when education is changing. For more than one generation into the 21st century, adults have been trying to figure out how to create schools that reflect the changing society and culture. For those generations, adults have spoken of the need to create “21st century schools.” (I have Read More
Elevator Pitch: Learning Outcomes
Curriculum and assessments leaders recommend beginning lesson and curriculum plans with a list of learning outcomes. What knowledge will students develop and what skills will students develop during the lesson or the unit. Many also advocate for clear and measurable outcome to be articulated. It is reasoned without these, the data deemed necessary for making Read More
Most Favored Pedagogy
Educators have preferences for how they teach. Some argue these arise from the structure of the subject they teach. While that is an important consideration, it is also true that some of that structure is imposed by tradition in the fields and the teachers’ preference for the methods they experienced. Regardless of the age of Read More
Elevator Pitch: Deeper Learning & Foundational Learning
As students experience deeper learning, they frame, understand, and attempt to solve problems as they interact with foundational knowledge. This facilitates their ability to remember what they learned, and they also become more skilled at assessing what they know and what they do not know. Advocates for deeper learning differentiate the use of foundational knowledge Read More
Why School?
The purpose of schools may seem obvious, but it is not, and it never really has been. Who teaches? Who is taught? For what purpose are they taught? Schools require resources. We construct special buildings where teaching happens (unless the learners are apprentices who are learning in the workplace). We pay teachers, administrators, and other Read More
Elevator Pitch on Cognitive Scaffolding
Some scaffolds are introduced to share the cognitive load or to draw attention to specific aspects of the work. Reiser & Tabak (2014) suggest scaffolding can be introduced to facilitate thinking in several ways. Especially when dealing with complex situations early in their studies, students may focus on irrelevant aspects of the problem or they Read More