IT professionals are familiar with system requirements, and they are comfortable helping to define them, exceed them in budgets and design specifications, test them, and confirm them. We write them when planning IT installation in schools as well. The reality, however, is that system requirements (the nature of the hardware, software, and connections) do not Read More
Category: Elevator Pitches
Elevator Pitch on Task-Centered Teaching
When adopting task-centered methods faculty select a task or problem that is derived from the real world and that represents an appropriate challenge for the students. The task as a whole becomes the rationale for the learning. Most tasks will fall outside of the expertise of the learners, so instructors do help identify sub-tasks or Read More
Four Approaches to Teaching
Four elevator pitches in one post: Behaviorist approaches to teaching is appropriate when an instructor knows with certainty what student must transfer. We help students know what steps to follow through worked examples and other “show-and-tell” methods, give them opportunities for practice, and we can evaluate them against clear criteria. Cognitive approaches to teaching help Read More
Elevator Pitch on Emerging Teaching Practices
In recent decades, scholars have rediscovered the very effective learning that happens outside of classrooms. Because it is so difficult for “school learning” to displace the concepts learned outside of classrooms seems to confirm the strength of what is learned outside of school. As cognitive and neuroscientists have illuminated the changes in human bodies and Read More
Educators and Technologists Don’t Speak the Same Language
I once served on a committee hiring a professional who was primarily going to serve as a network administrator. We were in the second interview, so there were fewer questions and more discussions, and the candidate asked, “What can you tell me about the environment?” The superintendent who admitted little knowledge of technology began describing Read More
Elevator Pitch on Virtual Classrooms
Faculty, especially those who teach at multiple institutions, complain about the learning management system. They wonder why they are expected to use an LMS that is not the one they prefer and they wonder why they are expected to use an LMS when they can use web 2.0 tools and email. I argue using an Read More
What Gould Said About Intelligence
Education is based on a simple idea: we want to make people smart. “Smart” is the general term that we use to describe an individual who has greater than usual skill and knowledge. Smart is approximately aligned with intelligence which is approximately aligned with the ability to think and learn. I am being nebulous here Read More
Elevators Pitch on Brains
In his 2013 book, Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Learn, Matthew Lieberman described research from late in the 20th century that determined the default areas of brain activity. When a person stops trying to do something else, and the rest of the brain goes quite, the default areas are active. If one begins Read More
Elevator Pitch on Speed in the Digital World
Whereas previous generations ordered products from mail order retailers and expected to wait several weeks as their order was delivered to the retailer via postal service, was processed and filled, and then shipped back; digital generations expect to place an order on a web site and receive the product within a day or two. Whereas Read More
Elevator Pitch on Brains and Technology
Human brains are adaptable organs. They are designed to absorb and process information, to find patterns and generalize, and store information in the many forms it finds and creates. As a social species, communication is an essential aspect of human life as well. Human brains are born into a social group and that groups form Read More