125: School Leaders, Technology, and “Spin” “Spin” is a fact of life for school leaders. They are faced with uncomfortable situations, and they must describe them in a positive light. I have seen this firsthand during my entire adult life which has been spent in education. It is difficult to ascertain if leaders believe their Read More
The story is compelling; it is one of the most important and challenging questions we can face: What makes us unique? It is well told and includes sufficient detail to be informative, while written in language that general audiences will find approachable. Bennett seems to have adopted Stephen Jay Gould’s approach to never “dumb down” Read More
12: A Harsh Reality About IT and School Leaders Information technology. All schools need it. All schools have it. All schools hire individuals with expertise in managing it to… well… manage it. In this post, I describe a reality that many recognize in their schools, but they are reluctant to admit it. This post calls Read More
Educators assume tests and other types of assignments in which students restate when they have learned, or perhaps apply what they learned to familiar problems, are an accurate demonstration of what students learned. While this may accurately measure changes in memory, it may not indicate the learner’s capacity to be critical, creative, or pragmatic with Read More
Most folks assume the curriculum comprises the information students are expected to learn, and that it is well-known, agreed upon, and accurately reflects the world. This is not true for many courses. Human knowledge is far more than information, and what we learn or when we apply what we have learned, it is rarely as Read More
IT professionals can expect to be asked to support accessibility checkers in the productivity suites they deploy. These tools (which may be built into the applications or may require add-ons to be installed) will identify parts of the presentations that are not compliant with ADA requirements. For example, they will identify missing metadata, missing navigation Read More
Because schools are public institutions, they are compelled to follow the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means teachers who create multimedia for use in their classrooms must ensure the materials are accessible. Accessibility of multimedia means, for example, video is closed captioned, slides have unique names, descriptive alternative text is added to Read More
There are testing protocols that have been incorporated into many curriculum programs that have been adopted by schools. The rationale is that all decisions about curriculum and instruction must be made to create measurable changes in students. Many educational theorists reject this assertion, and the evidence supporting the claims that more data is associated with Read More
Especially when educators include significant amounts of deeper, active, and authentic activities in their classrooms, there is frequent need for students to be reminded of how to perform certain tasks or to solve particular problems. This need often arises at different times in different students as they study independent inquiries, therefore demand is irregular and Read More
222: Efficiency of #edtech Repairs For much of the history of computers in schools, the “timeliness” of repairs was ill-defined and repair deadlines were not critical. When computers were only one or two per classroom and they were only marginally used in the curriculum, a computer being inoperable for a few days or even weeks Read More