About Adventures in Education

This blog is organized with the following three main categories:

The Intentional Educato r: I’ve been in education either as a participant or practitioner my whole life. This category is a reflection of my efforts and experiences as an educator. I believe in the process and am passionate about the never ending need to improve and fix this most human endeavor, and I’m certainly not shy about the role technology has in the process.
Education Re-examined: Many tend to think of institutions like Education as something that has always been, immutable, eternal, something that separates us from lesser creatures. This category looks at the cracks and imperfections in the institution of Education, not as some act of conjecture or sophistry but to continually look for ways to improve the process of education.
Disruptive EdTech: Our culture has been tech driven since someone used the term “Space Age” to prematurely describe the 1960s. Just as William Gibson said, the Future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. So it is with technology in education, technology moves in the blink of an eye and education struggles to stay relevant. This category looks at what might work, what needs work and all the widely hails “solutions looking for problems.”

As with anything related to human endeavor, the categories will frustratingly often overlap and require myriad sub-categories. I also do a host of other blogs on a great many other subjects that you can find at my main blog: joebustillos.com

Video Script:

One of the biggest problems with education is that everyone, based on their lived experiences as students of whatever system, assume that they are experts on what is best for education. Without disregarding anyone’s precious memories of a great teacher or horrendous suffering at the hands of some inhuman educator, the flawed memories of less-than-self-aware 10-year-olds are hardly the basis for deciding anything, much less what’s best for Education. I know, I’ve been that confused 10-year-old and I’ve taught those confused 10-year-olds for over twenty years. This blog attempts to explore the reflections, frustrations and observations of the kid who remembers being bored and avoiding reading assignments in the 5th grade and the professional educator trying to balance instruction with the need for students to NOT be spoon-fed answers that they should easily discover if they were given enough time or a sense of safety.

Add to that I recognize that the speed of our technological adoptions into society is lapping educational adoption on an unprecedented level that has thrown educators and administrators into a scramble about where to focus and what investments should be made. And there isn’t a clear path moving forward. At the same time, political forces have decided to inject their political beliefs into the fray with no actual experience as educators and that complicates the already complicated business of educating the broad expression of humanity that shows up in September for 180-days of instruction.

This is not something for the faint-of-heart or for someone not interested in having their pet-theories destroyed by the uncooperative attitude of a cranky 5-year-old not interested in learning his vowels. Suit up, dear reader, Adventures in Education is about taking what we have learned about how humans learn and testing these ideas with the students I have been working with for the past 20-something years. Just like any two-year-old learning to walk, there’s a lot of butts that unexpectedly end up on the ground and a lot of “well that didn’t go as expected” along the way. Enjoy.