So, we know the brain is (literally) a network of neurons; our cells are interconnected and it is patterns of communication among those cells that determine “what we know.” (Yeah, I know… oversimplified… but bear with me.) Culture is also a network. Patterns of communication and interaction among “things” (some living and some not). Increasingly, Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
Technology
Accounting is a technology that accompanied the creation of writing, and counting changed when “we” decided accurate records we needed. Whereas many cultures with primary orality do not differentiate numbers (many unwritten languages quantify using words for “one,” “two,” and “many”). Accounting necessitated accurate calculation of numbers including decimal places. The familiar base 10 and Read More
Culture and Learning
The culture (comprising beliefs, attitudes, symbols, and similar concepts) that learners experience when they are young contributes to their views and perspectives. These influence what behaviors in schools that learners value, how they define learning, and ideas about how learning occurs. These all affect how individual interact with curriculum, teachers, and peers in school. Differences Read More
A Response to Standard Education
Education has broad and diverse goals in our society: free and appropriate education for all. Despite the connotation of “standard” education, most recognize that “one size fits all” education is not what most students need. That suggests we recognize contingencies in education, just as scientists recognize contingencies. Science has centuries of managing contingencies, so we Read More
Elevator Pitch on the Nature of Schools
The purpose of education is to help people learn. Learning is a natural physiological process of the human brain. That nature defines the rules within which educators (and education policy makers) must play. While it might be convenient for policy makers to define test scores as a measure of learning, if test scores are a Read More
Effective Teachers Use Technology
Early in the history of computing, no one could predict the degree to which digital information and devices were going to affect communication. Early in the 21st century, it was common to quantify the speed at which humans communicate and the vastness of the information available, but those comparisons are no longer relevant. With the Read More
Education… Science
For a generation, educators have claimed to be “data-driven.” Ostensibly, they seek to ground their decisions and policies in measurable observation, but their constructs are dubious, their measures invalid and unreliable, and their analysis sloppy. Data are selected to If the debate surrounding the Common Core is so dissimilar to science, the reasonable question becomes, Read More
Elevator Pitch on Interest
Renninger, Ren, and Kern (2018) observe “it is possible for a person to be motivated and engaged, but not interested, whereas, when something is of interest to a person, it is always motivating and engaging. In general, interest can be defined as the tendency to continue engaging with the materials or with a situation. It would appear that educators who capture the interest of students are Read More
Thoughts on Digital Information in Culture
In the 20th century, electronic media (such as radio, movie, and television) became widely used throughout the industrial world. In the last quarter of the 20th century, electronic media also included computers. In the last decade of the 20th century, telecommunications networks to which computers could be connected further extended the media landscape in many Read More
How I Started in Education
I recently rediscovered a piece I wrote about why I entered my profession… “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 A. Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart,” in which the narrator attempts Read More