Educators import technology expertise from other industries—the individuals who manage your school network and repair malfunctioning computers probably learned their craft in a field other than education. What they learned about keeping devices functioning and providing you with robust and reliable service can be transferred from business or industry into schools. There is an important Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
The IT We Need: Appropriate, Proper, Reasonable
When we stop to think about the tools we use in teaching, especially the digital tools that we have today, the question “Do these help us achieve our goal?” arises and appears only incompletely answered. One’s answer to the question depends, of course, on what we believe the goal to be. For me, one who Read More
Observations of Narcissist Educators
35: Narcissistic Educators The label “narcissist” has become relevant in the United States in recent weeks and months. I will avoid comment on current events, but I will observe the concept is useful in understanding the actions of some educators. For the professional psychologist familiar with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a Read More
A Brief Typology of Teaching
153: A Brief Typology of Teaching Perhaps it is the many advertisements that have found there way through my spam filter recently. Perhaps it is that I have been reading (actually browsing) equal amounts of vendor-created content in trade magazines and peer-reviewed book chapters and articles from academic authors. Regardless of the origins, it is Read More
Thoughts on Born Digital #borndigital
Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age In 2008, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser wrote the first edition of Born Digital. It was one of several books to appear at the time that focused on the nature of “digital generations.” The timing of those books was reasonable as the generations who had never Read More
Everything has Changed: Thoughts on Education and Social Media
Greenhow, C., Sonnevend, J., & Agur, C. (Eds.). (2016). Education and social media: Toward a digital future. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Find it on Google Books When new technologies—information technologies—emerge, educators have a very predictable response: They reject it. This is, of course, a quite rational response: Clayton Christensen is well known for describing Read More
A Rationale for Connected Classrooms
© 2016 Dr. Gary L. Ackerman Even through the third decade of the 21st century is quickly approaching, and information technology (IT) is deeply embedded in the lives of our students, many educators are still reluctant to find a role for computers (in all of their variations), digital information, and social media in their classrooms. Read More