My afternoon walks have found Joy Lisi Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States playing through my ear buds. It was an interesting and thought-provoking listen. (I’m facing the challenge of blogging about it without being able to return to the pages.) The work is presented to challenge the narrative that computing Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
I was correct in 2002
I’m cleaning out some digital files… making sure I have copies of photographs and videos and deleting gigabytes of digital detritus. Luckily, I found a document written in 2002 on which I wrote: Learning. Such a simple idea. We all have done it for our whole lives. As humans, we have done it since the Read More
Rate, Interaction, Place: Three Aspects of Education
We how work in education have been thrown into chaos this past year. The chaos has not been as bad as our reaction to it, but that is a topic for another post. What has become clear in the past year has been educators’ assumptions about teaching and learning and schooling. As often happens, my Read More
Curriculum Repository Proposal
A few years ago, I was asked to draft a proposal for a curriculum repository for a community college. The had seen some of my ideas about this type of resource such as is explained on my post “Curriculum Repositories” and also “Curriculum Repositories Defined” and wee interested in how I might craft a more Read More
On Academic Freedom
One of the issues I’ve seen raised in recent months, and one that I expect will become more common as we move into the “post-COVID” era of education is academic freedom. Specifically, I refer to the argument by faculty that they have the “right” to teach in any manner they see fit and that any Read More
The Paradox of Banning Cell Phones
Cognitive load is a well-known and established theory. Basically, it posits humans have a limited amount of cognitive processing power available at any moment; game theorists would declare our cognitive capacity is a zero-sum quantity. What is used for one purpose is unavailable for other purposes. In classroom, we want to limit extraneous cognitive load Read More
On Familiarity and Novelty
Teachers who create classrooms in which students pay attention are skilled at finding the correct balance between familiar and novel. Human brains are adapted to figuring out “just the right amount of change.” The logic behind this adaptation is simple: If a situation is familiar, then it is predictable so we have a sense of Read More
Thoughts on Standardized Education
My career has approximately coincided with the history of personal computers in schools. I was an undergraduate student when “computer” meant a device that sat on a desktop and was turned on only after placing a diskette in the drive that loaded the only program that could be used during the session. The display was Read More
Thinking About Connectionism
For most of human history, communication was an aural or gestural activity. We spoke and we made gestures, other heard and saw our movements. In both cases, the communication was ephemeral. Unheard words and unseen gestures are lost. There is evidence of humans creating painting and other artifacts which presumably were intended for meaningful communication, Read More
On Reducing Bias in Online Teaching
I found this short answer to the question, “How can we reduce bias in online teaching?” which I composed a couple of years ago. I’m curious about my suggestion that Standard English is a method whereby we can reduce bias. I’m not sure I would give that suggestion now. Is that inclusive language or not? Read More