I’ve been rereading Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. I am familiar with criticism of his work, but I am a fan nonetheless—maybe it comes from the fact that I believe we can read works even if we dispute some of the points and still find them worthy. In his chapter on “Knowledge” Pinker writes: “So much Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
A Brief Story of Me as a Math Teacher
When I was a student, I was not a strong math student; my lowest grades were always earned in math class. I attributed this to the “D” I earned in math when I was in 4th grade. Despite this, I became a math teacher. My students (and their parents) frequently said I was among the best math teachers they ever had. I attribute this to Read More
Not Your Average User: Why School IT Is Different from Business IT
151: Not Your Average User: Why School IT Is Different from Business IT This is an AI-generated post based on a chapter from a book I published under a Creative Commons license a few years ago When we talk about Information Technology (IT) in schools today, we are almost always referring to complex systems utilizing Read More
Your Online Course Is Draining Student Brainpower: Four Simple Fixes from Learning Science
150: Spinning Up Distance Learning Classes Quickly I uploaded the syllabus for a course I planned, but never taught, to NotebookLM which generated this post Introduction: The Challenge of the “Empty Classroom” If you’re an educator, you’re likely familiar with this scenario: you’re handed an empty digital “course shell” in your learning management system and Read More
The Fraud and Fallacy of g: Why We Must Reject the Single Number for Human Worth
A post I have had in my “drafts” pile for some time… based on my readings of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man For centuries, there has been a recurring, politically expedient project in Western thought: the attempt to measure the immeasurable complexities of human ability, distill them into a single, quantifiable number, and Read More
How AI Helps Teaching and Learning
I have a stack of books about artificial intelligence waiting to be read. The field is emerging quickly, so my reading focuses on how AI has and can affect work, life, and society. Madhumita Murgia’s 2024 book Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI was the most recent book of this genre I have Read More
AI’s Role in Education
This post originally began with discussions of an article in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence with my colleagues. We were talking about AI an teaching, and the article “Shaping integrity: why generative artificial intelligence does not have to undermine education” by Tan and Maravilla which was published in 2024 ( https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1471224) captured much of my thinking. Read More
The Enduring Mismeasure: Why IQ Tests Fall Short
As school returns, I am hearing comments about “intelligence” return to my media feeds and in chatter amongst people who purport knowledge of teaching and learning. This seems a good opportunity to post again on the dubious evidence if IQ as it is commonly understood. For decades, IQ tests have shaped perceptions of intelligence, often Read More
Naturalistic Teaching
Many are familiar with the observation that (for example) outside of the mathematics classroom, students are less able to solve mathematics problems than they are in the mathematics classroom. Also, when asked to perform mathematics on a test, a student may score well, but when given a real-world situation (even in a word problem closely Read More
Metacognition: How We Become Competent
Metacognition is the process by which individuals think about their own learning. It is often described as an internal dialogue as it is a process in which the learner makes meaning of what has happened in his or her brain. While teachers can provide prompts and other tasks to facilitate reflection, metacognition is largely an Read More