I still remember the day. I was in my first year of teaching and I sat there holding my printed lesson plan. This was supposed to be my greatest lesson of the school year. I had planned it for hours, revising various aspects of it…
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…
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…
I never learned how to write copy in school. In fact, even after taking a ton (yes, we weigh them in tonnage) of literature and humanities classes, I somehow graduated from college without knowing the term “copy writing.” To be fair, I went to Arizona…
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…
Toward the end of the year, I remember feeling absolutely exhausted as a teacher. Once the testing is over and the pressure is gone, there’s this sense of relief. However, this was nothing compared to what my eighth graders experienced. You could see it in…
For the last 12 years, I’ve used design thinking as a teacher, an author, an educational technology startup founder and an artist. I’ve used in in the non-profit world in program development and I’m currently using it right now as I lead a team of…
Disclaimer: This post just barely tiptoes toward education. It’s mostly a post about my all-time favorite television comedy. About a week ago, I watched the final season of Parks and Recreation. It struck me, at the end of the series, that this might be the…
Note: I’m sure my thoughts on this topic have been heavily influenced by Dean Shareski. If you don’t read his blog, go check it out. For the last four days, I have been back at home with my family. We have had deep conversations….
“Hey dad, can I have a YouTube channel?” my son asked.”What kind of a channel would you create?” I asked.”Maybe a channel showing how to create things in Minecraft. But there’s already a lot out there. What if I had a channel showing kids how…