Gary’s Blog

Yet another post drawn from some writing I found in cleaning up an old drive. My guess is this is about 20 years old, and it is still valid in most ways. Good students are good students. Students who engage with the course content, their classmates, and their instructors in a reflective and active manner Read More

Bricoleur The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss developed the concept of the bricolage in 1960 to describe a human who adopts a particular approach to framing problems, solving problems and learning. Others have adopted the concept, and applied it to thinking about how to approach the use of information technology in schools. In my experience, being Read More

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

Another post based on my file clean-up. This is from about 25 years ago, and it largely still accurate. So just what are the things that I believe about learning?

Prior to starting work compiling the portfolio, one should compose two statements of purpose: The brief statement will serve as the first page of the portfolio and the longer one is a brainstorming and clarification document. Composing each will focus the portfolio creator’s attention on what is being done, why it is being done, and Read More

I recently found this piece I wrote several years ago about a book written by a high school classmate: In 2018, one of my high school classmates wrote Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students (Baker, 2018) in which he takes a close look at the myth “we are spending more, Read More