In face-to-face classrooms, teachers leading discussions can control the interaction like being the driver of a car as one can: · steer it back on topic; · stop it when it gets dangerous; · speed up when time is running out; · slow down and invite those Read More
Only when teachers/ learning designers are doing their jobs! https://t.co/DNbvfwFoFy — Dr. Gary Ackerman (@GaryAckermanPhD) January 14, 2022 My snarky reply to Derek Moore’s tweet drew the “tell me more” response. I tried to compose a few 280-character responses, but I didn’t have time, so I took to my blog. There is a companion tweet Read More
The “education industry” has been trying to navigate COVID for two years, and it looks like we will continue for the foreseeable future. One of the interesting aspects of this has been the insistence that we return to in-person teaching. I find this to be a puzzling situation. First, it is contrary to the pre-COVID Read More
Faculty, especially those who teach at multiple institutions, complain about the learning management system. They wonder why they are expected to use an LMS that is not the one they prefer and they wonder why they are expected to use an LMS when they can use web 2.0 tools and email. I argue using an Read More
Teachers talking over slides (or images or diagrams or animations) has become an important teaching strategy during the pandemic. It is likely to continue to be a staple of teachers not just because it will make the pivot to remote teaching easier when it becomes necessary, but because it allows for alternative method of teaching Read More
To outsiders looking in, teaching seems a relatively simple endeavor. Even to some insiders who do not step back and try to understand what they are doing, teaching can be perceived to be a simple endeavor. The reality is that teaching should vary depending on the nature of the curriculum, the purpose of the teaching, Read More
If instructors and school leaders seek to create schools in which practices and structures are aligned with the realities of human learning, then they must work from two hypotheses: First, the students who arrive in schools are experienced learners. Their experiences are affected by their culture, motivation, academic, and personal experiences. Any list of the relevant Read More
Students and others who need the spoken words in audio content playing in a Chrome browser tab to be presented as text can enable live captioning in the Google Chrome web browser. This can be used as a method of seeing captions when using: Video or audio in Google Drive that has no caption tracks Read More
I found this when cleaning up files… in the thesis for my master of arts degree. He wrote it in 1980. I wrote my thesis in 2000. It still appears to be an accurate assessment of our situation. Twenty years ago, Papert perceived education to be on the verge of a technologydriven revolution that sounds Read More
Students in online courses that include discussions frequently complain the task is a burden, the discussions are disappointing, and they contribute little to their building of new knowledge. Students report that the prompts used to focus discussions can make the board more interesting. If the prompt simply has them restate information from a text, they Read More