One of the most exciting things a student can experience is the proud moment when their hard work is seen by an audience beyond a teacher’s grade book.
Read MoreIf you teach at the elementary level you are more than likely familiar with the classic All About Me themed projects that students take part in at the start of the school year. A fill in the blank worksheet designed to give you, the teacher deeper insights into students lives, interests, and passions…
Read MoreVisual Communication skills. Everyone needs them. This isn’t an option for our K-8 students today. Their tomorrow will expect them to have an eye for design just like our yesterday expected us to know Microsoft Office. While short on time is an understatement, we need to find ways to get these skills inculcated into our students one way or another…
Read MoreI sat there looking at my Syllabus. Google Docs will black text and bullet points on a white background. The outcome seemed standard. Is that what I wanted for my students? I want my student to get excited about learning new things. I want them to be curious, inspired, and energized in my class…
Read MoreAny platform that empowers students to become authors and curators of content gets me excited. When Smore reached out to me to review their platform, I was excited to see two very powerful features.
First, is the "Educator Hive" database of created and shared content, authored by educators for educators. You can check out my vlog review of that here…
Read MoreYears ago I heard about the "Bad Idea Factory" like any buzzword I try to plumb the depths of Google to find the creator of these actives. The best I could do is find a 2012 article by Kevin Brookhouser tilted, 20% Project: Bad Idea Factory. In the article he shares that he learned about this activity from Ewen McIntosh at NoTosh but the link to his article is broken. I reached out to him on Twitter to get more information so hopefully he will respond and I can embed the tweet…
Read MoreI share during many talks that creativity is a mindset not an art set. The elephant in the room is once you buy into the mantra, what steps can you take to act on the mindset? There are so many cool ways to build up our creative abilities. What I am striving to do with all my work on the Educated By Design project…
Read MoreSaturday evening after the Jewish Sabbath, I turned on my smartphone to a flurry of notifications. While the volume was a bit more than usual, it was the nature of the conversation that really caught me off guard. You see, for the past 5 years I have been heavily engaged in an online education community that might not always agree, but tends to trend on being positive, supportive, and constructive when engaging with other educators in the space. This weekend, however, was a sobering moment where I said to myself, “well, the honeymoon is over”, as I read educators publicly trashing other educators in the name of [insert noble cause here]. So what is the big deal with brand influence’s infiltration into the education world? Are brands and influencers of limits in education? Read More on Medium.com...
Read MoreSo if we are open to shifting our thinking, what is the next step? It lies in a famous quote from Steve Jobs who said “creativity is connecting things”. The ability to connect things lies in how we look at the relationship between people, places, and ideas. It's in how we overcome one of the greatest obstacles to creativity - Functional Fixedness.
Read More