142: Inert Knowledge Alfred North Whitehead was a British philosopher and mathematician who worked in the early decades of the 20th century. He is best-remembered among educators by an essay entitled “The Aims of Education” in which he introduced the idea of inert learning. He criticized schools that focused on teaching in a manner that Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
Some Thoughts on Online Learning
Cleaning out some files, I found one that contained a post for a blog for which I used to write. This was in my “to post” folder when I stopped blogging for the organization that sponsored the blog. I earned my Master of Arts in Education in 2000 at the local state college, and I Read More
Technology in Support of Diverse Assessment
Cleaning up some files recently, I discovered I had left this off my CV. Ackerman, G. (2017). Technology in support of diverse assessment. In M. Simonson & D. Seepersaud (Eds.). Proceedings of the 40th Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Paper presented at AECT Conference, Jacksonville, FL.
What We Can Learn from George
I heard this week of the passing of one more of the teachers who taught in my junior high school. When I was a student, George taught industrial arts. In seventh grade the curriculum was mechanical drawing and woodshop and in 8th grade it was ceramics and metal shop. He was one of three full-time Read More
For a Friend
I learned this morning of the passing of one of my middle school (but we called it junior high school back then) teacher who later became a colleague and mentor. He brought me in to the work I do now and advanced my career and work in ways I won’t forget. One of the projects Read More
Thinking About Jerome Bruner Again
This is an extended version of a previous post. In describing education as a social invention, Jerome Bruner observed, “each generation must define afresh the nature, direction, and aims of education to assure [that] freedom and rationality can be attained for a future generation” (1966, 22). He went on to detail how new discoveries in Read More
Thinking About Social Justice Education
Social justice education is an idea that has captured the attention of teachers, scholars, leaders, and other in recent years. I have tried to find just what it means for me for some time. For context, I am a white, heterosexual male with grey hair; while I was raised in a weakly-practicing Protestant family, I Read More
One Teacher’s Experience
Teaching is a fascinating profession; it comprises individuals who were all successful as students. Implicit in our concept of teaching is replicating for our students what proved successful for us. The reality, however, is that most of our students are not on the same path we are on (there are exceptions to this especially in Read More
Another View of Technology Acceptance
School and technology leaders spend great amounts of time trying to figure out what they should prioritize; this guides their decisions about where resources are used and which efforts receive attention. Despite their insistence that they are data-driven, many school leaders seem to ignore much that we know about how the phenomena they are trying Read More
What D’Arcy Thompson Said
Early in the 1940’s, biology was a science being revolutionized by the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). English biologist D’Arcy Thompson commented, “We have come to the edge of a world of which we have no experience, and where all of our preconceptions must be recast” (cited in Gould 1998, 404). In many ways, Thompson’s Read More