I first encountered the terms “Fordist (old)” and “ICT (new)” in a 2006 article by Olumuyiwa Asaolu. Since then, I have seen the terms used in earlier works, and they are used to differentiate the nature of organizations and the work they do (and the workers and leaders they need). I summarized the differences in Read More
Month: March 2018
Situational Awareness in Instructional Design
64: Situational Awareness in Instructional Design As we think about the work of creating appropriate, proper, and reasonable educational technology, our decisions and actions are often biased by the perspective of our position. Educators are biased towards ease of use and effectiveness for teaching; technologists are biased towards reliable, robust, and secure computer systems. School Read More
Planning for Innovative Technology
In preparing a presentation for a upcoming conference, I found a theme that resonated with me and a few others who were reviewing my early drafts. Without delving into the details of the presentation, I will state the presentation focuses (in part) on the nature of school planning that leads to innovative practices being adopted; Read More
Cooperation vs. Collaboration
I recently objected to a colleague who was using “cooperate” and “collaborate” as synonyms. As I read the best thinkers about teaching and learning, I find the difference described in their writing about the differences makes sense and helps to to clarify my own thinking about what happens in classrooms (both mine and my colleagues’). Read More
Own Your Learning
A few months ago, I had the chance to arrange for a young artist to perform for a group of high school students. At the time, the student was a junior in a Massachusetts high school that is organized around internships and other alternative curricula. The school is an amazing place and it is filled Read More
Wisdom
In his 2010 book Wisdom, Stephen Hall who is an award-winning writer about science and society, posed the question, “How do we make complex, complicated decisions and life choices, and what makes some of these choices so clearly wise that we all intuitively recognize them as a moment, however brief, of human wisdom?” (p. 6). Read More
Leaving to Learn
I recently spent a day on -the-road as I traveled to visit two students who are seniors in high school and spending time off campus in internships. My first stop was at a family-owned automobile repair shop and towing company. The student plans to take over that business once he earns his college degree. My Read More
Two Types of Presentations
In my recent book Efficacious Technology Management, which I published under a Creative Commons license (you can find it here), I began a section with the paragraph: “Data” has been widely, but imprecisely, used in education for most of the 21st century. Data-driven educators make decisions based on information they have gathered about their students’ Read More
Understanding Stress
Stress has been a topic in the school leadership literature (at least the popular literature) as we begin to confront the increasing levels of stress in youngsters’ lives. I have encountered it in the conversation around “trauma-informed schools,” and in my professional reading of iGen and The Self-Driven Child. It is well the topic is Read More
Proficiency-Based Education
Teachers know “proficiencies” are coming to dominate as the buzzword that is attracting the attention of educational leaders and policy makers. (Some might characterize this as a distraction of attention from important issues and needs, but I will proceed without comment on that speculation.) One of the disputes I have with how this is being Read More