39: Don’t Be The Department of “No” | RSS.com It is conference season for educators. It comes three times per year: In the middle of fall, after the semester has gotten started, but before the end of the term crunch starts. Again, in the middle of the spring semester and finally (to a lesser degree) Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
On Digital Information
With the arrival of digital electronic computers late in the 20th century, the stability and predictability of necessary literacy and numeracy skills and knowledge evaporated. The ability to know information and to be able to recall it on demand is a skill that is losing importance as online encyclopedias become available on handheld computers. Calculators Read More
Is the AI Hype Over?
Those who have been around for a few years, know that most technology innovations go through a common pattern: I do believe we are ready to begin understanding and integrating generative AI. I come to this conclusion because of these observations: In Vermont, we have a saying: “Let’s see how this sugars off.” It typically Read More
Elevator Pitch on User Accounts
User accounts can be added to one or more groups that are configured on the network operating systems as well. These can be set by whatever rules the network administrator decides; of course, in schools, teachers are often assigned to groups based on the subject areas taught and grade levels taught, so they will be Read More
Elevator Pitch on CIA Triad
Network security would be very easy if no one ever needed to use computers or data. From a security point of view, it is unfortunate that people use networked computers. The reality is that we need networked computers and that data stored on them to do our work as educators. IT designers consider confidentiality, integrity, Read More
An Experiment with AI
A colleague and I have been leading forums on AI at our community college. Once per month, we meet with faculty and once per month with students. The discussions have been rich and we also share tools and ask other to share tools. At our most recent forum, we were exploring Notebook LM. This is Read More
IT Skills & Educators
In the first decade desktop computers were in schools, most teachers had little experience with computer technology, so dedicating professional development resources to train teachers in the basic operation of systems (tasks such launching applications, creating and editing documents, and saving and printing) was appropriate and necessary. Soon thereafter, the local area networks and the Read More
Elevator Pitch: Leveraging #edtech
I used to recoil when the term “leverage” was applied to computers in educational settings; I had heard too many administrators and vendors describe how some tool could be “leveraged to improve student outcomes.” As we chatted while waiting for a meeting to begin, an English-teaching colleague pointed out that the word really does apply Read More
An Old Guy’s Story of Media
The need to train and retrain teachers has taken on increased importance as digital computers have arrived in schools. As an undergraduate student enrolled in a course on teaching methods, I made an appointment with the staff at a small media office and had them sign a sheet confirming that I successfully threaded a film Read More
Elevator Pitch on Zone of Proxial Development
Like all Vygotskian ideas, the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a complex theory, but it can be reduced to a few simple principles that are quite easy to understand. First, within any domain of human knowledge, there are problems that an individual can solve easily and there are others that are too complex to Read More