Okay, let's unpack this. Imagine you take, like,
elite, highly competitive powerlifters and total
beginners who have never even touched a dumbbell
in their lives. Oh, boy. And you shove them all
into the exact same unstructured gym class, lock
the door, and just tell everyone to, uh... Do
fitness. Yeah, that sounds like a complete disaster.
It's absurd. But I mean, if you really think
about it, that is exactly how most organizations
treat technology training. Oh, absolutely. It's
spot on. You sit in a mandatory software workshop,
and the dynamic is just incredibly predictable.
Half the room is, you know, staring blankly out
the window. Because they already know the system.
Exactly. Completely bored. And then the other
half is practically sweating through their shirts,
frantically clicking around, just trying to figure
out how to, like, Log in. Right. Just finding
the password reset. Yeah. It is a massive drain
on time and honestly, morale. So today, welcome
to the deep dive. We are extracting the blueprints
from a rural school district that actually solved
this. Which is pretty rare, honestly. It really
is. Our mission today is to break down a really
fascinating post by Gary Ackerman from hackscience
.education. It's titled elevating ed tech professional
development. A great piece. Yeah. Now we're going
to figure out how schools and really any organization
can stop wasting your time with terrible tech
training and instead, you know, build the dynamic
engine for actual success. The beauty of Ackerman's
piece is that it diagnoses, well, a universal
pain point. Right. Because whether you're a classroom
teacher, a corporate employee, or a project manager,
you have felt the sting of a poorly designed
training session. Oh, for sure. We've all been
trapped in that room. Exactly. And Ackerman includes
a direct quote from a curriculum coordinator
in the source text that just captures this perfectly.
What'd they say? The coordinator notes that when
they offer these generic quote -unquote technology
workshops, they get some high flyers right alongside
absolute beginners. The powerlifters and the
people who've never seen a dumbbell. Precisely,
and the result. Faculty who make a genuine effort
to attend, they leave feeling completely frustrated.
Yeah. And that their time was entirely wasted.
Which is brutal. It's the absolute worst case
scenario for an organization. So to fix it, this
rural school district partnered with educational
technology experts to study this massive hurdle.
And what did they find out? Well, they realized
the traditional ad hoc approach to professional
development, what educators call PD, is just
structurally broken. Wow. Broken how? It relies
on a one size fits all model that ultimately
fits absolutely no one. Right. So to fix a broken
system, we first have to diagnose the underlying
mechanics of how tech is actually being taught,
right? Exactly. We have to look at the gears
turning underneath. And through their research,
these school leaders mapped out three critical
dimensions that govern every single training
activity. This is where it gets really methodical.
It does. Think of these dimensions like sliders
on a soundboard. Oh, I like that analogy. Yeah,
they dictate the exact flavor of a workshop.
So the first slider is the focus on technology.
And this ranges from completely decontextualized
on one end to highly contextualized on the other.
Right. And when the focus is completely decontextualized,
we are talking strictly about the universal operation.
of the hardware or the software, just the buttons,
the training exists in a total vacuum. Got it.
But on the exact opposite end, a highly contextualized
focus means the training shifts entirely away
from the raw buttons. It assumes you already
know the buttons. Exactly. And it focuses on
solving specific, nuanced teaching problems for
very targeted audiences. So if the focus dictates
what we're teaching, that immediately creates
like a friction point about who is actually qualified
to lead the room. Absolutely. Because the IT
professional, you know, they know the software
architecture intimately, but they don't necessarily
know the students. Which introduces the second
dimension, the source of expertise. Okay, slide
number two. Yep. At one extreme, you have purely
technology expertise. Like the IT department.
Right. This is your outside vendor or your systems
administrator. They know the back end, but they
lack a background in pedagogy. Pedagogy meaning,
like, the actual science of teaching. Exactly.
The art and science of how a human brain learns
a new concept. Now, in the middle of this spectrum,
you find technology specialization. What does
that look like? Think of these as your tech savvy,
quote unquote, steward teachers. They bridge
the gap. Oh, I see. Yeah, they speak the language
of IT, but they also speak the language of the
classroom. They're bilingual. Exactly. And then
at the far extreme, you have teaching expertise.
The veteran teachers. Right. These are veteran
educators whose core competency is purely pedagogy,
completely independent of whatever new gadget
is sitting on the desk. It's kind of like asking
the architect who designed the acoustics of a
concert hall. to actually conduct the symphony.
Oh, that's a great way to put it. Like, they
built the space for the sound, but they don't
necessarily know how to make the music themselves.
Right. You need both, but you wouldn't ask the
architect to critique the violin section. No,
you wouldn't. And this raises an important question,
and it really points to the most profound revelation
from the school leaders in the source material.
When you look at how these workshops are traditionally
built, the end user, which is the student, is
almost entirely left out of the planning. Which
sounds completely crazy when you say it out loud.
It really does. I mean, the entire purpose of
the educational system is the student, yet they
aren't even factored into the tech training equation.
It is a massive blind spot. So this third dimension,
the role of students measures their presence
in the process. The third slider. The third slider.
It ranges from having zero direct consideration
of students, moving up to planning based on,
like, mere theoretical predictions of how students
might act. Guessing, basically. Right, guessing.
All the way to the other end of the spectrum
where lessons are actively driven and adjusted
by direct, real -world student feedback. Okay,
so we have these three dimensions. How contextual
the tech is, who is teaching it, and whether
the students are even in the picture. Armed with
those sliders, the district leaders realized
they could categorize all tech professional development
into three distinct learning experiences. And
here's where it gets really interesting. The
fatal flaw that almost every organization makes
is physically mixing the first two phases together
in the same room. Yes. Let's look at phase one,
which the district calls training. The foundation.
Right. It is highly decontextualized. The focus
is exclusively on how to operate the hardware
and the software. So we're talking about rolling
out a brand new student information system or,
you know, those interactive whiteboards. Exactly.
Participants are simply learning which buttons
to push. And the data used is totally fake. Like
a dummy class roster. Yeah. So you can make mistakes
without breaking the whole system. It's led entirely
by tech experts and students are physically absent.
Because it is so universal, training is really
the only phase suitable for a massive diverse
audience. Right. The whole school in the cafeteria
type beat. Exactly. The source material points
out something critical here. Every single teacher
whether they're teaching AP Physics to high school
seniors or finger painting to kindergartners,
needs to know the exact same sequence of clicks
to submit their morning attendance. Attendance
is attendance. Right. And the core goal of phase
one is finality. Once you learn those basic clicks,
you graduate. You should never have to sit in
that specific training session ever again. OK,
I have to play devil's advocate here for a second.
Go for it. Separating learning the buttons from
writing the lesson. Sounds great. in a sterile
laboratory setting. Sure. But in the real world,
who has the time to attend two separate workshops?
It's a fair point. Why can't we just learn the
software while we build the lesson? Isn't that,
I don't know, infinitely more efficient for a
busy professional? Well, if you try to be efficient
that way, you trigger what a principle in the
study called the toxic mix. Toxic mix. That sounds
intense. It is. To understand why it's toxic,
we really have to look at the brain's working
memory and cognitive load. A human being simply
cannot simultaneously encode new motor and spatial
tasks, like navigating a bizarre new user interface.
Or remembering where a specific drop -down menu
lives. While simultaneously performing high -level
abstract synthesis, like designing a nuanced
curriculum. Exactly. You just can't do both at
once. Think about the last time you had to learn
a massive new software update at your job while
under a strict deadline. Oh, it's a knife. That
absolute panic you felt. Your brain was redlining
because it was trying to map the software and
do the high level work at the exact same time.
That is the toxic mix in action. And that is
precisely what this research aims to eliminate.
A veteran teacher trying to build complex grading
rubrics will just shut down if they are simultaneously
forced to figure out basic logging credentials.
It's like you cannot write a brilliant novel
if you are actively struggling to remember where
the keys are on the keyboard. That's a perfect
analogy. You learn the keyboard first in phase
one. Right. Then you move to phase two, which
the district calls planning. So phase two is
where the actual music gets made. Yes. Planning
is the application phase. The magic of pedagogy
enters the equation here. Teachers collaborate
to prepare activities that use the technology
to accomplish very specific curriculum goals.
So the sliders have moved. The dimensions have
shifted entirely. The technology is now highly
contextualized, which means the audience narrows
down significantly. Yeah, the source gives a
perfect example of this narrowing. You would
never have the whole school in a phase two planning
session. No, it'd be a waste of time. Only the
English and history teachers might attend a workshop
focused on, say, advanced digital bibliography
tools for long form research papers. Right. The
kindergarten art teacher does not need to be
there. Exactly. Their context is entirely different.
And because the focus is now on curriculum, the
expertise leading the room shifts too. Planning
is led by teaching experts. Not the IT guys anymore.
Right. It's often mediated by those technology
specialists we mentioned earlier, the ones who
speak both languages. Exactly. The educators
are creating, assessing, and editing actual materials
they will deploy in their classrooms. In phase
two, the technology is forced to bend to the
teaching needs, not the other way around. I love
that. So planning is essentially getting these
polished materials ready for the real world.
Right. But as the source notes, planning relies
entirely on predictions. The teachers are building
lessons based on their best assumptions about
how the students will interact with the bibliography
tool or the interactive whiteboard. It's all
hypothetical at this stage. Exactly. So what
does this all mean? Does a perfectly planned
tech lesson actually survive contact with real,
unpredictable students? What's fascinating here
is that the answer is almost always no. No. A
perfect plan rarely survives contact with reality.
And this introduces the final, and really the
most innovative phase identified by the district,
phase three, which is design. Design is the iterative
process, and it happens strictly after the lesson
has been deployed with the students. Wait, wait,
the lesson is over, the students have gone home,
and now we are back to the drawing board. Yep.
Why didn't phase two catch the errors? To understand
why predictions fail, we have to look at a psychological
concept known as the curse of knowledge. The
curse of knowledge. Adult experts suffer from
this constantly. When you know a subject or a
software interface deeply, you literally lose
the ability to remember what it feels like to
not know it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Teachers suffer from
the curse of knowledge when planning tech lessons.
They assume a navigation path is intuitive just
because it's intuitive to them. But to a 10 -year
-old, it's Greek. Exactly. The reality of the
classroom is that educators routinely, inaccurately
predict a tool's effectiveness. I mean, the students
will always find the one distraction you didn't
anticipate. Always. They'll find the hidden chat
function, get completely derailed, and just ignore
the actual assignment. Or, on the flip side,
the tool makes the lesson vastly more efficient
than the teacher expected. And suddenly, they
have 20 minutes of dead air at the end of the
period. Exactly. That disconnect is why phase
three is mandatory, not just a nice -to -have
addition. In design, the focus shifts slightly
back toward finding generalizations and troubleshooting
tips that can help across various classrooms.
But the most vital shift is bringing the student
dimension to the very center. The mechanics of
design require heavy, active collaboration between
the teaching experts and the technology specialists.
Let's drill into that collaboration for a second.
If a lesson bombs, why do you need both the IT
person and the veteran teacher in the room to
fix it? Because when a lesson fails, the team
has to diagnose the root cause of the failure.
Was it the tech or the teaching? Exactly. Was
it a failure of the technological infrastructure?
Did the Wi -Fi drop? Did the server timeout because
30 kids logged in simultaneously? Right. Or was
it a failure of the pedagogy? Did the digital
format actually increase the cognitive load and
make the reading comprehension harder than it
would have been on physical paper? That's a huge
distinction. The solution for a server timeout
is vastly different from the solution for a poorly
reading assignment. And you can only figure out
which one it was by capturing actual student
reactions. It's forensic analysis. Exactly that.
Teachers conduct debriefings with the students
immediately after the lesson. The entire goal
of Phase 3 Design is answering one highly specific
question. How can this pedagogical plan be improved
for these specific students. It creates a continuous
logical loop. It really does. Training gives
you the raw mechanical foundation without the
pressure of performance. Yes. Planning gives
you the targeted contextual application of the
tool. And design ensures that you are actually
iterating based on reality, rather than the assumptions
of a teacher suffering from the curse of knowledge.
It's brilliant. But taking a step back here.
Why does a school's leadership team need to be
so incredibly rigid about dividing their professional
development into these three exact buckets? Like,
why enforce such strict labels? Why be so pedantic
about it? Well, if we connect this to the bigger
picture, it is all about creating what the researchers
call conceptual artifacts. Conceptual artifacts.
That sounds like something you'd find in an archaeology
museum, not a staff meeting. It does sound deeply
academic, I know, but it's an incredibly practical
organizational tool. OK, unpack that for me.
A conceptual artifact is simply a standardized
shared understanding and a shared vocabulary
within a group. When an organization lacks these
artifacts, communication breaks down immediately.
Someone sends out a calendar invite for a technology
workshop. Right, and nobody reading that email.
knows what it actually means. Exactly. Is it
training? Is it planning? Do I need to bring
my curriculum notes? Am I learning the buttons
or writing a test? Right. And that ambiguity
is exactly how you end up with the dreaded scenario
you mentioned at the very beginning. half the
room surfing the web, while the other half sweats
over a login screen. So by giving these phases
distinct names and rules, you completely eliminate
the ambiguity. There's a really impactful quote
from a principal in the source material who experienced
this shift firsthand. Oh yeah, the discrimination
quote? Yeah. They said, I used to see all technology
workshops as the same, but now I discriminate
them and we are all using the same vocabulary.
We know what to expect which is huge. That is
a massive operational upgrade It means if a tech
specialist wants to host a workshop They cannot
just send a generic blast to the whole staff.
No, they have to be specific They have to explicitly
state this is a phase two planning session. The
intended audience is history teachers You must
already possess phase one baseline skills to
attend. It standardizes the expectations across
the board. It's so clean. There is an established
framework in educational theory called TPACSEC,
which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content
Knowledge. TPAC, okay. It's a model explaining
how teachers effectively integrate tech into
their classrooms. And the source briefly notes
how perfectly this new district typology aligns
with that theory. How so? Under this structured
approach, phase one training strictly handles
the baseline technological knowledge. It's just
the raw tech. The TK and TPAC. Right. Then phase
two planning and phase three design are where
teachers actually synthesize that tech with their
pedagogy and their subject content. The PCK.
Exactly. It bridges the gap between high level
academic theory and the boots on the ground reality
of a Tuesday morning staff meeting. It really
is a brilliant way to untangle a very messy not.
And I want to connect this directly back to you,
the listener, right now. Yes, because this isn't
just for schools. Exactly. Even if you are not
an educator, even if you don't work anywhere
near a school, the core lesson here is universally
applicable to how we absorb new information and
manage teams. It applies everywhere. Whenever
you are learning a new digital tool, or maybe
you are a manager rolling out a massive new software
system at your corporate job, remember to ruthlessly
separate these phases. Don't do the toxic mix.
Do not try to do it all at once to save time.
Separate the training, which is just learning
the spatial layout and the buttons from the planning,
which is actually applying that tool to your
quarterly goals or daily tasks. And never forget
the design phase. Oh, never. You have to iterate
and improve the process based on real world feedback
from the people actually clicking the buttons.
If you mix the mechanical buttons with the big
picture strategy, you're just going to frustrate
everyone in the room. and trigger that toxic
mix. Exactly. It serves as a blueprint for respecting
people's time and their cognitive limits. But
you know, there is one final, highly provocative
detail hidden right in the byline of Gary Ackerman's
post that completely flips this paradigm on its
head. The disclaimer at the very top of the page.
Yes. Ackerman explicitly notes in the text, I
had AI create this post based on a chapter I
wrote a few years ago. Wait, really? The whole
thing? He used artificial intelligence to synthesize
and generate this entire framework about how
humans should learn technology. That is wild.
And that leaves us with a massive looming question
to mull over. If artificial intelligence is now
fully capable of generating the very conceptual
artifacts we use to learn, how is phase three
going to evolve? Exactly. this time talking about
human teachers actively diagnosing failures and
adjusting lessons based on student feedback.
But what happens when the educational technology
itself becomes so advanced that it adapts to
a student's feedback in real time? Oh wow. Like
if the software analyzes a student's confusion
metrics, realizes they are struggling with a
cognitive load, and instantly bypasses the teacher's
planned lesson to offer a newly generated one.
The tool is doing the phase three design all
by itself. It's cutting the human out of the
When the machine is capable of iterating on the
fly, diagnosing its own pedagogical failures,
and rewriting the curriculum in real time without
human intervention, Who actually becomes the
teaching expert, then? The whole dynamic shifts
entirely. I mean, you might end up with those
elite power lifters and absolute beginners in
the exact same room. But the room itself just
perfectly, invisibly adjusts the gravity for
each individual person. That is something to
deeply consider the next time you are staring
at a generic login screen wondering who designed
the workshop. Thanks for joining us on this deep
dive.