A few months ago, I received a Facebook friend request from a former student. I remembered her as a quiet kid that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t paying attention. I also remembered her vibrant imagination that came out whenever she wrote her blog posts….
This week, I asked my cohort to analyze different unit planning models. This is a challenging part of the graduate classes, when teachers are learning the nitty gritty craft of creating units and lessons from scratch. I walked over to the group analyzing the design…
When I go home, I’m no longer a dad. I transform into a sidekick to the world’s coolest superhero. I become a nurse to a stuffed animal surgeon. I get to help an architect and a builder in forts made from couch cushions. I become…
My goal is simple. I want to make something new each day. Sometimes, I make stuff. Sometimes, I make a difference. On a good day, I get to do both. I often use design thinking as a framework for my creative work. If you’re interested in any…
When I was a kid, my brother and I built a “roller coaster” in the backyard with a wagon, some scraps of wood, and tons of pipes. Was it safe? Probably not. Did it ever work properly? Not really. But it didn’t matter. We were…
Right now, I’m sitting on an airplane. I mean, I’m not actually sitting on the airplane. I’m in it. Because, if I were on top of it, I wouldn’t be bored. I’d be terrified. Without access to the interwebz, I have nothing to do. I’ve…
A few years ago, I had the chance to teach science in a self-contained classroom (teaching all subjects). I scoured the Internet for examples of great demonstrations that would captivate my students’ attention. It worked at first. I did the typical experiments. You know, add…
Last April, I had the opportunity to deliver a TEDx Talk in Pennsylvania. Here’s the talk: There’s a deeply cultural idea that freedom and opportunity are the key ingredients to creativity. We use terms like “think outside the box” to describe the wild ones who…
It all began the year I taught sixth grade ELL. I had the same group of students all day in a class that, by law, had to be hyper-structured (we had a four-hour block of reading, writing, oral language, and grammar). On Tuesday, we didn’t…
In 2014, Microsoft launched a hugely successful AI bot named Xiaoice in China. With over forty million conversations, users often described feeling as though they were interacting with a real human. Microsoft founder Bill Gates described it this way, “’Xiaoice has attracted 45 million followers…
