I recently listened to a 99% Invisible podcast where they mentioned an escavation of a ship deep underground in the San Francisco business district. I paused the podcast and pondered how a ship would end up buried deep within the city. Who put it there? How did it get there? Why did it remain buried? In this moment, I missed teaching middle school...

My kids don’t have homework this year. Both the middle school and the elementary school in our have abandoned the practice. The result? My oldest son is researching ancient civilizations and peppering me with questions about the Assyrians (yes, they were that brutal and they included them in their frescos). My middle son has spent the last two evenings...

I love how everything that people mocked as being “outdated” is now coming back. “Don’t lecture. It’s horrible,” people said. Now it’s, “Hey, we have a TEDx Event at our school.” People mocked non-techie projects and now it’s “we really need hands-on Maker Spaces. Maybe we should have some cardboard and duct tape.” We went from saying, “note-taking...

Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered. I shared a few success stories,...

For all the talk of student engagement, I wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “How do I engage my students?” a better question might be, “How do I empower them?” The answer is empowerment. This is what happens when students own the entire learning process. It’s what happens when they ask the questions and choose the strategies....

This is part of a series on The Future of Learning and it’s a trend that I’ve noticed often. It’s the idea that some of the more “vintage” skills (philosophy, curating, deep work, making things from scratch) are actually the most relevant in an age of connectivity.  Last Friday, I had a massive list of projects I needed to work on, so I took my computer...