My afternoon walks have found Joy Lisi Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States playing through my ear buds. It was an interesting and thought-provoking listen. (I’m facing the challenge of blogging about it without being able to return to the pages.) The work is presented to challenge the narrative that computing Read More
Category: Book Review
Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
For all of the rhetoric around being data driven for the last few decades, educators are generally woeful users of data when it comes to making classroom decisions. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that data (quantitative date that is) can only be meaningfully be applied to large data set. We might Read More
Small Teaching Online
The stream of “how to teach online” books and materials to support those faculty who are teaching online. I enjoy these. They are increasingly aligned with what we know about learning (and we know much more than my teachers did… we know more than any teachers did even 10 years ago). One of the great Read More
A Field Guide to Lies
When I was an undergraduate student studying to be a science teacher, one of my goals was to develop scientific literacy in my students. One of my journals from the time records. “I want my students to be able to use science to make decisions.” While I am not exactly sure what I meant by Read More
Creating Things that Matter
Creating Things that Matter is the 2018 work by David Edwards; on the dust jacket Edwards is identified as a creator, writer, and educator. Until this book, I was unfamiliar with the man or his works, and the many examples of his creative endeavors introduced me to field in which I have no experience. Edwards Read More
The Consciousness Instinct
Readers are fans of writers in the same way sports enthusiasts are fans of teams (many of use are both). This reader is a fan of those who explain the world and bring fresh explanations and creative insights to human experience and understanding. Michael Gazzaniga is one such author and my shelf has many of Read More
The Technology Fallacy
Books about “the digital future” are everywhere. I would look at my bookshelf and name some that have affected my thinking in the last few years (actually decades now), but they are in my office on the campus that has been closed for 10 weeks now. The Technology Fallacy: How People are the Real Key Read More
Critical Thinking
The question of “what should we teach?” is a perpetual one for educators. Some describe it as a pendulum and believe their job as an educator is to hold the pendulum as the bottom of its arc. Other believe the pendulum belongs on either extreme. Yet others ride the pendulum and just adopt the most Read More
The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions
For more than a generation, we have heard that “information technology is causing deep changes in how we communicate.” There has been a steady stream of literature supporting the claim, along with others who reject the claim. In the 2020 book, The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions, Ray Brescia make the claim that Read More
In Case You Didn’t Know, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
I walked past the books in the discount retailer I was visiting to purchase storage supplies for my wife’s home office. When she arrived at the section she needed, she noticed I was not with her. When I finally caught up with her, she noticed the book in my hands: Walter Isaacson’s 2014 The Innovators: Read More