Gary’s Blog

A common complain among students in teacher education programs is that that coursework focuses too much attention on theory. As an undergraduate student seeking a career in science education, I was fond of saying “I don’t care about all of this, I just want to know how to teach.” Well, it wasn’t until I got Read More

With the beginning of another school year, we get another flurry of “how was your summer” questions. I have told people it was a “summer of adapting” for me. There were some circumstances I expected were going to occur, they did, and now I have been adapting. The responses from people to my “summer of Read More

I continue to clean old files and find some valvable pieces that are getting cleaned up and posted. Here is an example. 241: Types of Problem Domains | RSS.com Most human endeavors can be placed in one of three categories; they are differentiated by the nature of the systems within which one works or that Read More

This in an excerpt from my 2026 book Efficacious Educational Technology. It is available under a Creative Commons license. My rationale if that theories are rules we should follow when designing educational technology systems. The “gold standard” of research used to develop theories is the double-blind random experiment. When researchers conduct experiments, they review existing theory and define Read More

Conditional release is a strategy whereby we make materials in our online course available to students only after a certain date or after they have done things we decide such as review other materials or even pass a test. This is a way we can force students to review materials or ensure they have learned Read More

An excerpt from by 2026 book: Efficacious Educational Technology. Find the references in the full version of the book. Despite educators’ complaints that students are disinterested learners, humans are active learners about what makes them curious. Johnson and Majewska (2022) define and summarize informal learning as a complex and largely voluntary activity that accounts for Read More