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Gotta Be In It To Win It
Update 11/6/14: KI Furniture has released our commercial! We always encourage our students to take a risk, but when is the last time you took a risk for them? With them? As I’ve started to...
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The Impact of Passion-Based Learning A Year Later
This time last year, my students took the stage to talk about their yearlong Passion-Based Learning assignment: the Be About It project. In just a few weeks, some of those students will hit the stage...
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Fair Haven’s Innovation Labs – The unSTEM Labs
With the trust and support of my leadership team, I’ve been given the green light to design and co-teach the class of my dreams. Since joining Fair Haven last December, and through this summer, I’ve...
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Introducing: Kid Vision
Educators have shadowed students through the school day, but when was the last time we actually saw school through a students’ eyes? I think we can learn a lot if we could see what they see. So when I...
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The Makerspace Is Doomed
“School districts are eliminating high school shop classes for a number of reasons, but the bottom line, of course, is money. The American secondary educational system pumps as many of its competent...
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Sometimes A Little EdTech Can Make A Big Difference
I met Melissa Killion at an EdCamp session on the Flipped Classroom two years ago. Afterward, we talked for a while about our experiences on what had been working and what hadn’t in our classrooms....
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In Media Blooms
Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends....
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Why Minecraft.
I believe in student-centered learning. Part of student-centered learning is giving students voice and choice in the classroom. A few years ago, back when I was a high school English teacher, students...
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Teaching Entrepreneurship through the For-Profit MakerSpace
I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship and its related topics. From running a business, to the way money and markets work, to behavioral economics, finance, marketing, and advertising, I find...
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Year in Review: Lessons from the Innovation Lab
I came up with the Innovation Lab, our take on the makerspace, when I first got to Fair Haven eighteen months ago. The goal was to make an engaging technology “special” to replace our more traditional...
View ArticleThe Best Google App For Education No One Is Talking About
*** So I just found out my contact form was broken. I missed 300+ emails… I’m answering the ones from this month, but if you emailed me via the contact form, I didn’t mean to ignore you. Sorry! Please...
View ArticleCultivating Accountability and Motivation in the Makerspace
In the Innovation Lab, our fifth and sixth grade blended learning makerspace, we see students once a week for the entire school year. During the school year we “grade” students based on their use of...
View ArticleSometimes It Is Just About The Technology
We hear educators say it all the time: technology is just a tool or it’s not just about the technology, it’s about how a teacher uses it. While I fundamentally agree with these types of statements,...
View ArticleApplying Nudge Theory to the Classroom Part I
If I weren’t an educator, I would want to be a behavioral scientist. I find the field to be fascinating. Knowing what makes people tick and why they do what they do has always interested me. One of my...
View ArticleSilo-Busting through EDTech: Growing in the Garden with the Internet of Things
I hate that we teach education in silos. I hate the idea that some students believe what they learn in English doesn’t apply to Science. Math can’t be used in History. Health and Phys. Ed. are best...
View ArticleGamification: Problem Solving in the Fifth Grade Classroom
You might recall that I’ve been working with Rachel Cheafsky to gamify her 5th grade classroom using the technology she has available to her. Well, Rachel has been killin’ it! Last time, she wrote...
View ArticleEvolving Our Makerspace: An EdCorp Designing for Slack
When I got to Fair Haven two years ago, I started our version of a makerspace called The Innovation Lab. In The Innovation Lab, we use design thinking to make for others as we expose kids to computer...
View ArticleEvolving our Makerspace: 3 Lessons Learned Designing for Slack
The Slack Design Challenge continues! If you haven’t been following my last few posts, I have decided to take entrepreneurship in our makerspace, called The Innovation Lab (under construction), to the...
View ArticleWhat Learning Management Systems Are Still Missing
I only have a few classes left before I wrap up my master’s degree. I’ve enjoyed Boise’s master’s degree program, but one thing I won’t miss is Blackboard. Blackboard, the ubiquitous, bland “course...
View ArticleEvolving Our Makerspace: The Conclusion
For those of you who haven’t been following along with my last few posts, our fifth and sixth grade student-run business, FH Gizmos, landed a manufacturing contract with Slack. Slack tasked us with...
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