One of the difficult lessons that all teachers face when they first meet a group of students is that not all students arrive with the same motivation, goals, and experiences as the teacher. This is certainly true in liberal arts classrooms and mathematics classrooms, but it is even true in many programs that prepare students Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
#edtech for #edleaders On Network Permissions
IT professionals know the danger of using computers when logged on with an account that has administrator permissions. When logged on with an administrator account, users have access to controls to change configurations, install software, and manage other users. All of these have potential to be set improperly. Most IT professionals have two accounts; they Read More
On Unions and School IT
Some folks asked me about unions and school IT jobs recently, I thought my response might be a good blog post: Schools tend to be highly unionized organizations. Often, the licensed educators in the school are members of one union (and covered by a different master contract) than non-licensed employees. Many factors affect whether an Read More
On Advertisements in School
Another overlooked aspect of IT use in schools is students’ exposure to advertisements. Many sources of online information used in schools, including mainstream media and journalism sites, the sites of professional organizations and edited periodicals, and especially social media sites (like YouTube) are funded by advertisements. When students access these sites, they are also exposed Read More
On Perceptual Learning
As learners become more skilled at observation, they become more capable of perceiving and interpreting important aspects of situations. When presented with a new situation, strong perceptual learners are able to understand it by attending to important and relevant elements. Those who have more deeply developed perceptual learning will be able to identify relevant patterns Read More
Layers of Educational Technology
This comes from Technology in Schools: Its Not Like this in Business, the book I recently released under a Creative Commons license. When looking at information technology in schools, we can break it into five levels (see table 1). As one proceeds from “IT Systems” to “Students and Teachers Using IT for Teaching Tasks,” each Read More
On Shifting Paradigms
The concept of the paradigm shift was introduced in the 1960’s and revised in 1970 by Thomas S. Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1970). Kuhn was the first to publish this account of how knowledge in science advances: Scientists conduct experiments and carry out their observations to study unanswered Read More
On Intelligence
All measurements are subject to error; this is well-known to carpenters who “measure twice and cut once,” and it is known to observers of elections in which recounts result in much different returns than the original count. Measurements in schools are subject to error as well. If a student is handed back a quiz with Read More
Understand Your IT Users
One of the challenges for designing information technology for school populations is the broad range of skills that users bring to the device. When we build IT for business users, we can usually assume their skills fall within a narrow range. Consider the range of literacy and numeracy skills as well as the physical characteristics Read More
The Concept of School
Stop reading this sentence and picture a school; in your mind enter a classroom where class in underway and look around. See the teachers in the room, see the students, imagine what they are doing. If you didn’t play along with the preceding sentence, recall a movie or television program you watched in which a Read More