Every Tuesday and Wednesday night, I teach a 4-hour pedagogy class. I use the design thinking cycle to plan the course (a topic for another blog post) and so as I teach, I am in the Highlight and Fix phase. I thought I would give…
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A few days ago, I noticed people sharing a few random articles from Atlas Obscura. I noticed a few of their tweets rising to the top of my Twitter feed as well. As I drove to work, I caught a part of an NPR story with one…
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I still remember the moment I went to the computer lab to check out the World Wide Web. This was somewhere around 1993. The librarian called it a Field trip to the Information Superhighway and for awhile I thought she was like Ms. Frizzle.…
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Imagine you are building a self-driving car. Chances are you'll look for a team of engineers who can figure out how to make each part work fluidly in an interconnected manner. You'd look for software engineers and mechanical engineers and experts in user interface (UI) and…
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About three years ago, a student approached me before class. "Mr. Spencer, I heard that you wrote a children's book." I nodded. "I co-wrote it with my wife and then we self-published it." "Can you teach me how to publish my own novel?" I launched…
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I knew social media had hit mainstream the moment that my mom sent me a friend request. Suddenly Facebook had become a place where "mom" and "friend" were synonymous. I knew that Facebook had lost its cool, edgy, college vibe. Since then, Facebook has become…
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Note that I use the terms "organization," "creative process," and "project management" interchangeably. I'm basically suggesting that students should own the workflow process. I have an embarrassing confession to make. I like Microsoft Word. I like the way it handles autocorrect when I start typing…
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I'm sitting at my desk reworking my pedagogy course. With each revision, I move closer and closer toward truly empowering my students to own the learning. I started with student choice and slowly shifted toward student freedom. But now, I'm taking it a step further.…
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My hardest year of teaching involved a sixth grade self-contained class about four years ago. Somehow, I got off on the wrong foot. I had just been an instructional coach and I felt, on some level, that I could handle any classroom situation. I was…
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When I was a kid, I loved learning but I hated school. That's not entirely true. I loved my teachers. I liked some of my classmates. I even enjoyed some of the assignments. However, I hated the non-stop sense of compliance. Things like: Binder checks,…
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Dr. John Spencer
I’m a professor and a maker. Sometimes I make things. Sometimes I make a difference. On a good day, I get to do both.
