Today I learned about featured images in WordPress posts. I changed the theme of this blog website in attempt to bring more images aligned with each post. What I learned along the way is even if the post includes an image, if you fail to make it the featured image, then the image will not appear on the homepage blog list.

Often times when something is not working we look to change the appearance or things on the surface. When instead, the issue is not understanding how to fully use the thing in the first place.

It makes me thing of EdTech and all the different new, shiny apps that compete for our attention and space within the classroom. Oftentimes the new thing that we are looking for is already exists in what we are using. But we don’t spend enough time really learning and exploiting all the features and use cases. In the end, we confuse students with an alphabet soup of different apps.

It is like learning. We get so excited as students learn new things we bring on the next thing rather than spending the necessary time and energy exploring the particular topic with significant depth.

This happens most often in math. Students can add 2 digit numbers, let us move on to 3 digit numbers with regrouping. Meanwhile the speed we move through these topics is robbing students of the opportunity to further their number sense.

This dilemma is particularly troubling when students are behind, especially with the impact of COVID. We want to accelerate learning and rapidly progress to where students age and grade level say they should be. But at what expense? Learning becomes like an alphabet soup of different topics that lack a common underlying thread or purpose.