This morning, I logged into Twitter and noticed a stream of education articles. Several described how homework is ruining childhood. A few mentioned why schools are crushing creativity. I noticed my own blog post describing how “kids aren’t tired of learning but they’re tired of…
“We need kids to be creators, not consumers.” I’ve heard this statement so many times at conference and in Twitter chats and in blog posts. I get it. We want students to be creative. But is consumption actually a bad thing? See, every person I…
When I was a kid, I thought the epic life was the big life. You know, hit the game-winning home run. Slay a dragon. Conquer a distant land. When I got older, I still believed that the epic life meant doing big things. Make…
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…
Flash back to Tuesday afternoon: I’m sitting down at the computer overwhelmed by the uncertainty of audience. I’m thinking about that technology training where I had wanted to show teachers how to use Google Drive for assessment . . . and then Google Drive was…
Initially, I cringed at the term marketing. I viewed myself as an artist who thought that my work would be discovered. I viewed marketing as trickery. However, over time, I realized that if the initial goal of the design thinking cycle involved solving a problem…
I have noticed that students often hate the revision phase. In the design thinking cycle, they go from research to ideation and building a prototype. It seems cool. They’re excited about what they made. But then when we switch to testing and revising, they get…
I’m a fan of digital writing. After all, I’m sitting at my computer typing right now. And yet, when it comes to my deepest writing, I nearly always scribble it out by hand. When I’m stuck, I doodle. When I plan, I sketch out webs….
When I was a kid, I spent hours drawing pictures. Even when I wasn’t supposed to be drawing, I doodled. I sketched cartoons on the back of sermon handouts. I drew characters on the margins of the notes I took in class. For me, drawing…
When we think of innovative companies, it’s easy to imagine an open-air tech startup with ping pong tables and free drinks and huge windows and chairs so modern you’re not sure how you’re supposed to sit in them. Sometimes I look at those spaces and think,…
