In courses organized around the instructionist recitation script, the ability of students to comply with the presented knowledge and provide expected answers is the valued outcome. In deeper, active, and authentic learning environments, students who show the greatest ability to apply multidimensional capacities to propose reasonable and fact-based solutions are the most competent learners. Mehlenbacher Read More
I begin this post with three stories: First, I had an hour-long conversation with a teacher (while waiting for my son at the airport). He complained about students; he complained a lot. That is not unusual; all teachers have always complained about students, but this was different. He appeared to be blaming students for all Read More
Schools have a responsibility to ensure each educator has a functioning account and sufficient access and storage space to maintain this web presence on web servers provided by the school. Thing to remember about your web presence: Vet web sites before you link. Pay attention to language, bias, and discrimination that may not have been Read More
More than 25 years ago, when I first started working with computers in schools in a serious way, we were all trying to learn how these new devices were going to work out. We did not know that we were going to be carrying around the Internet (we didn’t even know about the Internet!) in Read More
I recently discovered this draft of a piece I wrote about five years ago. It is still relevant and explains my recent decision to leave teaching. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” Those words begin the second paragraph of Edgar Read More
In 1981, I was a sophomore in high school, and I decided to be a teacher. In 1988, I was in front of middle school classroom filled with science students. I still have the observations in which my department head and principal attested to the quality of my interactions with students. My wife still reminds Read More
Educational researchers Scott Garbiner, Cary Aplin, and Gitanjali Ponnappa-Brenner (2007) contrast engineering instruction for well-defined and measurable outcomes with designing instruction for sociocultural environments. Those who engineer instruction seek plans that lead students to meet goals (alternatively they select prescribed instruction plans that are intended to produce the desired outcome), and if the goal is Read More
When computers arrived on the consumer market, they were tools for programming hobbyists. By the mid-1990’s consumer and educational computers came with Internet protocols and modems as standard parts. As massive numbers of users went online, the Internet was predicted to be “the infinite library.” While traditional publishers moved content online to begin creating this Read More
“Just what does ‘good’ technology-rich teaching and learning look like?” This question has focused my attention as I recently returned to the field. There is little doubt that classroom are now filled with digital devices. For the first decades of digital teaching and learning, we yearned for the funds to make sure every students had Read More
Last week, I attended my first meeting of a user group for a particular educational platform. In my new position, I was glad to find a cohort of professional who do similar work at similar institutions, using the same software. As a newcomer to the group, I introduced myself to many attendees, gleaned what I Read More