There is no lack of ideas about how to restructure and reorganize schools and classrooms. Educators are very familiar with the never-ending series of “buzz words” that emerge, capture the attention of leaders for a few years, then fade into disuse when the next term distracts leaders. In recent years, the derisive label “buzz word” Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
Deeper Learning Defined
Just what are educators supposed to teach? Better yet, what are students supposed to learn? These are questions that educators must consider at a much deeper level than my teachers did when I was college student in the 1980’s, and even when I was a graduate student 10 then again 20 years later. For generations, Read More
Theory & Education
Theory, of course, permeates everything we do. -Stephen Jay Gould Many educators would disagree with Gould’s observation. For these teachers, “theory” is conflated with “silly ideas for which I have no time, I need to cover the material.” I understand this approach, much that we do in education can be done without directly indicating the Read More
Tools for Interaction in LMS
Many varieties of web 2.0 tools have been available since the late 1990’s; these tools are all designed to make it easy for users to publish information to the web and to interact with others via posts and responses. Many of these are built into LMS, so can easily be incorporated into virtual classrooms. The Read More
Perception is Reality with IT
Designing and deploying information technology systems is a perfectly tame (although complicated) process. The rules for configuring systems are well-known and predictable; knowing how we want to configure them can be more challenging, but the process is well-known. Also, the rules for configuring IT systems are the same regardless of the nature of the work Read More
The Three Agogos
71 The Three Agogos The Greek word agogos means leader. We still encounter the work today when we refer to the work done by teachers. Traditionally, the craft of teaching is called pedagogy, a word that combines “ped” for children and “agogos” for leader, so (loosely) one’s pedagogy is what one does to be a Read More
On Teachers, Leaders, and Technology
In locations where computers, laptops, the Internet, handhelds, and related devices have penetrated into the consumer market, ICT has become a transparent part of life making it difficult to perceive its strong sociocultural influences. From inside one of those cultures, we hardly recognize the extent to which ICT changes how businesses buy and sell, performers Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Open to Secure
Technology systems are very valuable. Even a modest system can represent an investment of tens of thousands of dollars for network devices (routers, switches, access points, servers, and similar devices that users never see). The cost of software to keep the devices functioning is frequently thousands of dollars per year as well. Including personnel and Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing” is the vernacular term for computing services that are provided via a World Wide Web interface. As mobile devices have become more popular, cloud computing has become popular as well. Despite the impressive computing capacity that is available in mobile devices, they have less capacity than a laptop or desktop computer with a Read More
ePortfolios: Collect to Cull
The central feature of every portfolio are the artifacts which are those examples and fragments of work that illustrate the learners’ skills, knowledge, and habits. It is important to note that with some exceptions, artifacts are fragments of work. Rather than including the entire paper, one will include only the abstract or the conclusion, or Read More