The most flawed educational proposals proceed from the position that education is an engineering problem, and thus we can build educational systems can be built to create systems that produce measurable achievement reliably. For many reasons, those systems that approach all teaching and learning as a recipe that produces learning that can be measured with Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
An Elevator Pitch on Learning
Humans are learners. Humans are also the products of their environments, and once something from the environment is learned it is very difficult to unlearn it. What you know becomes your ideology which determines, in large part, your cognitive biases, what you “know,” and what you will learn in the future.
On Nicknames
Nicknames have been on my mind recently. Around my 40th high school reunion this summer, I thought about the nicknames we had for friends. We all referred to each other which them and remembering missing and lost friends by their nicknames, I realized just how cruel they were. I also live in the town Read More
Limitations of Open Mindedness
We all should be open-minded. When we allow the possibility that we don’t have the answers, that better answers exist, that our information may be incomplete or incorrect, or that others bring new and valuable perspectives, then we can change our minds and make better decisions. When I was a younger man (like from the Read More
On Myths in Curriculum
Increasingly, we recognize many of the things that are “true” in society are myths. In education, we hear lots of folks promote “learning styles,” but that idea is a debunked myth. In education, we also hold that curriculum and teaching should not be political. It is reasoned teachers’ job is to teach the facts and Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Passwords
Brute force attacks are one strategy whereby hackers attempt to access systems. A common brute force attack is to attempt to guess passwords. By requiring users have complex passwords—complexity being defined by length and different types of characters—system administrators can minimize the potential that brute force attack will guess the password. In the example pictured, Read More
Elevator Pitch: Technology Acceptance
For several decades, several variations of the technology acceptance model have been used to explain and predict the use of technology by individuals and within organizations. In general, when users perceive IT to be easy to use, effective for their tasks, and similar to that used by others; they are more likely to use it Read More
What? Why? And How?
Throughout my career as an educational technologist, I frequently used a “What? Why? And How?” structure to organize my presentations to students and to faculty. The earliest evidence I can find in my teaching of this organization is in 2000 when teaching the information technology course in the school librarian sequence at our state university. Read More
QR and Data Security
Today, URL shortening services and quick response or QR code generation tools are widely available to internet users. While these are useful services when (for example) sharing links to your conference presentation materials with the in-person participants, they can easily be used by phishers for spoofing. Notice in the complete URL, you do have the Read More
On Student Autonomy
83: Technology Acceptance and Educational Design A recent tweet and my reply (along with the replies of others) got me thinking about students’ role in deciding curriculum, learning activities, and products through which they demonstrate their learning. Earlier in my career, colleagues and I spoke of “student voice and choice.” As with all dimensions of Read More