competence-ed

On Applied Course

For generations, one of the questions teachers must contemplate and answer for themselves is “What do I want my students to be able to do with the lessons I teach them?” As I have answered that question, I have come to view my answers along a continuum. My continuum of goals I have for students Read More

competence-ed

On Problems in Education

In education, problems are not so easy to isolate and fix. Students and teachers are vastly more complicated than IT and their lives are affected by far more variables than even the most sophisticated IT systems. When looking carefully at problems in education, we discover they cannot be isolated; and solutions may resolve symptoms but Read More

competence-ed

On Standardized Curriculum

Curriculum (what teachers are supposed to teach) is an interesting part of school design. Ostensibly, there are things that each seventh-grade student (for example) should know, but it is very difficult to define “what students should know” outside of the context of school. The statement, “the book is written at and eight grade reading level” Read More

competence-ed

On Collaboration in IT Planning

Humans have a long history with technology. It is reasonable to conclude that humans and their technologies cannot be separated. Without our tools, our species would not have become the Earth-altering species we have become.  When reviewing the history of our technology, we see that information technologies are a relatively recent invention, but for several Read More

competence-ed

Why Testing is Meaningless in Schools

It is widely known inside education (but much less so outside of education), that we really don’t know what to teach or how to measure learning. Educational researchers will dispute this, as they spend their entire careers defining learning and measuring it. In science that is allowed, and we accept the conclusions of studies, but Read More

competence-ed

On Open Resources in Schools

A wide range of expenses consumes educational technology budgets. Very obvious expenses marked the cyclic spending that characterized the first decades of educational computing; computers arrived in boxed, as did software on disks to be inserted into the computers. As networks were installed, expenses became more hidden from users. Servers, routers, and switches (each with Read More