You need to hear both sides of every “disciplinary” incident and you need to hear about every disciplinary incident. A teacher gives a student a zero for not doing her homework. A student is told to stop talking in class. A teacher…

What is technology? Who gets assistive technology? Who gets privileged? — “If technology enables a kid to read above grade level, why wouldn’t we allow that?” Dan McGuire, a leader in open-source educational tools, quoted me in a post. I responded, “If technologies aren’t allowed to help kids read, eyeglasses and contact lenses need to be banned.” Because I simply cannot…

You’ve already cried wolf about living in the present too many times. Now you’re panicked by ChatGPT in schools. I might concede that you have a right to be nervous. We do live in a world (or at least in the US, UK, and certain parts of Western Canada) where a large percentage of the adult population seems unable to either tell…

Assumptions that destroy kids’ opportunities Long, long ago, when I was in the New York City Police Academy, I needed a short break from listening to law books as I rode the subway and stuck cassettes of Joseph Wambaugh’s seminal police procedural novel The New Centurions into my Sony Walkman for a week’s worth of…

Begin with a pure mission, dedicate to the future, commit to continuous change and adaptation, raise the bar for everyone. — In the late 1960s, the US Navy and Marine Corps faced a critical issue. …

I’ve been trying to count the number of days I spent on the campus of Michigan State University, but I can’t. It’s a lot of years, more than ten. I’ve been an undergrad there, a grad student, taught classes, and even been a parent. I have a few bitter memories…

Choosing to present your text in unreadable forms seems self-defeating. So why do so many in education do just that? — A month of discontent. Repeatedly this winter, I’ve been asked to work in and with documents that I cannot read at all. I mean, yes, reading — the decoding of text — is not my strength. Not at all. So I listen, using text-to-speech apps. …

TPECK and the whole of learning environments Human environments are not flat, they are not two-dimensional. They are not just three-dimensional, either. And so, by extension, human experience is beyond three-dimensional as well. The world, the universe, surrounds us. It lies below us and above us. It stretches back into…

Columbia University’s new business school buildings’ reliance on stairs as social spaces is a huge embarrassment, but these architects are not alone. A glowing review of two new business school buildings at Columbia University caught my attention. The first step seemed great. A business school that was not just about Milton Friedman’s theories and quarterly profits for Wall Street is very welcome. Recently retired Dean of the school Glenn Hubbard explained in…