Posts in Technology
If school closes tomorrow don't panic! Here are some ways technology can help kids learn during the coronavirus outbreak

What if school closed tomorrow? We aren’t prepared to go fully online! What can we do?!?!

This message, from a head of school, popped up on my Facebook page this week. He asked for a phone call and while I did my best on the spot to imagine how a school would address the challenge of closing for a day, a week, or even a month, I had no idea how a school could go fully online on the stop of a dime…

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Upgrading Student All About Me Projects With Adobe Spark Post!

If 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…

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Space Matters! Look at how Adobe Spark can empower students to design meaning and tone in their content

Adobe continues to push the boundaries of how their design software can provide access and nurture the design abilities for the youngest learners. I still remember struggling in 9th grade to master a rather primitive version for Photoshop (shout out to version 4.0!). Today, I watch in amazement as children as young as kindergarten use Adobe Spark to creative powerful visual designs to share their classroom learning.

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Take Famous Figure Bios from Boring To Epic Using Adobe Spark Post!

Visual 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…

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3 Ways To Use Smore As A Platform For Students To Become Authors And Develop An Eye For Design

Any 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

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My Top 10 SXSWEdu Panel Picker Picks!

Tis the season to vote for SXSWEdu Sessions. Anytime I hear the word Panelpicker, I start a singing in my head that Peter Piper Picked A Peck of Pickled Panels. Yes. That is lame. 

So where do you find the awesome sessions to vote for when the SXSWEdu search field is so bad aka nonfunctional?

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Back To School Resources with Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark Teaching Resources

Getting started with FREE Adobe Spark in the classroom? You've come to the right place. Adobe Education Exchange is chock full of great classroom content, and to get you up and running quickly, here are some of our favorites…

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10 minus 1 awesome ways to App Smash Adobe Spark and Flipgrid

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words is a video? About 1 billion hours worth, or so says the latest Techcrunch survey of Youtube usage. Video is dominating the way in which we consume content and create it too. Today, nearly all social platforms have embraced the creator side of things, encouraging users to create content that rich with video, images, and text. In comes Adobe Spark Video…

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Creativity Is About Combining The Unexpected, Not Just Drawing It

I 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…

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When Something Doesn't Exist, Make It Yourself

In the Fall, I will be launching a unique and exciting project with one of my high school students, Ariel Mansano, Class of 2020. The project, is a podcast call Beyond The Test. The podcast’s mission is to connect with professionals who are innovating in their industry and share their stories of passion, self-awareness, and pursuing their dreams with high school students to empower them to believe they could do the same…

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Why creative thinking might be our strongest asset

Developing a creative mindset is more important than ever before, not just for our students, but for educators as well. The advancement of technology, the connectedness of society, and the innovations that are taking place on a regular basis all point to creative thinking as a key asset in the digital age...

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Don’t let perfection stop you from making your mark on the world

There are so many incredible people in both the world of education and other industries that I interface with. I see incredibly talented people succeeding, many times in the very same niche that my work falls into. They travel around the world, they’re sought after and always ranked in “top innovator” articles, and have huge followings and engagement around their work. It’s outright intimidating and sometimes has you doubting yourself and what you have to offer. The truth is that voice in your head is the fallacy of perfection…

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Here Is One Way We Can Empower Students To Leverage The Internet To Make Research Meaningful

As I sit with an 11th grade student, he starts to share with me how he wants to figure out how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help people fully control their dreams. It’s a mindblowing idea, but where do you start? He has no clue, and as I try to keep up the persona that educators, or any “expert” knows everything I start asking him questions. Not questions he needs to answer, but rather questions he needs to act on. A big challenge in life is not knowing what you don’t know. So what do you do when you don’t know something? Not just young people, adults too underestimate the power of the internet to find answers they need or even ones they didn’t know they needed. The number one response to nearly 80% of questions in my courses is “Google It”. Should I know everything, or should I know where to find anything? Digital and Internet literacy is as fundamental as writing and reading. So where do you start? How do you become a Google search ninja?

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5 Steps To Create Your Own Recipe Of Unexpected Classroom Creativity

When it comes to learning something new, I’m hungry. If a day or week goes by and I don’t learn something new, I feel like telling myself, “Michael, you’re doing it wrong.” I’m hungry because the openness to learn, to be a “lifelong learner,” means you’re never done, you’re never satisfied and you never become complacent. Complacency is poison. This refusal to continuously seek out new ideas, keep up to date on emerging trends, and know when to pivot and double down on personal and professional growth, is toxic. It’s toxic on an individual level and even more destructive on an organizational level because when you get to that level, then you have “Blockbuster vision”. If don’t know what Blockbuster vision is, it’s when you see a competitor (Netflix) disrupting your industry with a brand new way of doing things and you write them off as a fad. Then you go bankrupt...

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6 Ways You Can Use Design Thinking To Look At Learning In Totally New Ways

When I was young I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. An artist.

I also remember being shot down, questioned, and doubted. I remember the only people to ever support and encourage me were my parents. Even my painting professor questioned my future in the art world.

The good news is that I didn’t listen. The reason is that I felt then, and know now, that my God given talents to create, curate, and construct ideas intop experiences or physical items. These abilities are what allow me to fulfill my mission in life and provide maximum value to those around me. Whether it’s visual designs, project workflows, or launching a company, my level of self-awareness of what I am good at and what I can do for those around me gives me a level of motivation and drive that at times makes me feel unstoppable. I don’t always succeed, and I will never be done growing, honing, and refining my craft. But there is one thing that is certain...

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Why Collaboration Is The Most Important Skill You Thought You Already Had

Let me share a story of an 8th grade class that had a chance to understand and experience true collaboration. Each year this class travels to upstate Washington and embarks on a week long science trip in Olympic National Park, one of the only locations in the world to house tide pools, rainforests, and mile high mount tops. In years past, students experienced nature first hand and documented it in their "science notebook", compiling their thoughts from observations, expert guided tours, and experiments...

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