Gary’s Blog

Intelligence has been perceived to be a cognitive activity originating the brains of an individual for generations. While there is surely a cognitive component, learning science is telling us that human brains evolved to learn from and with other brains. While methods that find students learning together continue to be contentious, it is clear that Read More

Teachers talking over slides (or images or diagrams or animations) has become an important teaching strategy during the pandemic. It is likely to continue to be a staple of teachers not just because it will make the pivot to remote teaching easier when it becomes necessary, but because it allows for alternative method of teaching Read More

Technology is a force that exerts strong influences on society and culture. For those living within a culture its effects are so familiar they are barely perceived and thought to be a natural part of every culture or society.   What we expect of people (our peers, our leaders, our children, etc.) and out institutions (schools especially) Read More

The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss introduced the concept of the bricoleur. Wikipedia is a good starting point for defining new terms, so I started with that definition when I started promoting this approach to using technology in schools more than a decade ago: “It is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoleur Read More

A colleague and I were talking over a video call today… No… that is not true. We were bitching… we were commiserating… we were griping about careers being spent in education and the things educators can do when they leave the field… or more precisely the things it is assumed we cannot do when we Read More

Over my career, I have adopted the role of skeptic. Whenever anything new comes along, I look at it carefully and I must become convinced there is a compelling reason to adopt it. I also, however, turn the same critical eye to my own practices; I seek to convince myself that what I am doing Read More