As a former middle school teacher and current full-time professor and best-selling author, I’m a big believer in empowering students (and teachers) through the power of creativity. Whether you sign up for one of my online courses, enroll in one of my cohorts or invite me to spend time with your staff, I promise you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective and new ideas to transform your classroom.
Schools are designed to be practical but this has a hidden drawback. Innovation is often impractical because it's unpredictable. So, what if the push toward "practical skills" in school is actually making learning impractical? And what if impractical ideas and skills we ignore are actually…
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Last year over 40,000 students and 450 schools from 5 continents participated in the very first Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and teachers shared and launched their creative projects all day long around the globe. This year, we are doing…
A few weeks ago, my son convinced me to download Minecraft on my iPad. He’s been playing it for a few years now and is at that stage where he is entering portals, creating drop world and doing parkour. Meanwhile, I’m at the basic level….
What happens when you give students exemplars? Do they simply copy the pre-existing examples? Do they fail to take creative risks? Do they internalize the idea that their work must fit a previous model? Does it implicitly tell students "this is what it should look…
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Limitations and challenges can be frustrating. However, they can also be the creative constraint that leads to problem-solving and divergent thinking. Over the years, I've learned that students love challenges that they find engaging, intriguing and meaningful. Some of these are practical and real-world. Others…
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It’s Thanksgiving evening and I trudge up the stairs with every anticipation of writing a post about food and family and gratitude. I pull up my chair and flip open my MacBook. A black screen appears. I tap on the buttons. Nothing happens. I click…
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When my grandpa died, my grandma told me that she missed the small stuff. She had plenty of photo albums packed full of memories, but what she missed the most was waking up next to him in the morning. I remember visiting her on a hard…
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A few days ago, I met Manuel Herrera at MORENet. He has an amazing maker space where students engage in creative thinking on a daily basis. It's a bastion of creativity and wonder and his passion for it is contagious. However, as we talked about…
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A quick disclaimer: I don't know a thing about redesigning learning spaces. I love thinking about the creative process and I believe creative thinking can happen anywhere. Anywhere. Some of my favorite creative work in high school happened when I was sitting in a row,…
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Brainstorming Is Broken Brainstorming can be fun. You get together and generate a massive list of ideas. Everyone is shouting all over each other. It’s exciting. It's passionate. But what if it's not all it's cracked up to be? That's a key argument in "Why…
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