The Astrodome was a modern miracle, a Space Age wonder, with a glass dome, high-tech air-conditioning, and the world’s biggest scoreboard. When it opened in 1965, reporters dubbed it the “8th Wonder of the World.” (Wilson, 1965) This was the future. No more bad weather…
If we want to see innovation happening in our schools, we need to trust, encourage, and empower teachers to transform their practice. Too often, teachers are forced to teach inside the box and it can feel frustrating. In this post, I explore why teachers are…
This is the first post in a week-long series on makerspaces. I once taught an eighth-grade student who had written four novels online, despite the fact that she had only been learning English for three years. She spent her free time in class looking up…
Last October, A.J. Juliani shared an idea for a book we should write together. After we had talked about student choice, voice, and ownership, he said, “I want to do a follow-up to Launch called Empower. Let’s make it a why book. Let’s make it a book about a…
Schools are designed to be practical but this has a hidden drawback. Innovation is often impractical because it’s unpredictable. So, what if the push toward “practical skills” in school is actually making learning impractical? And what if impractical ideas and skills we ignore are actually…
When I was a first-year teacher, my team leader Nancy gave me this heaping box of classroom supplies. On the top, she placed a notecard with the words New Teacher Card. On the back of the notecard, she wrote a note explaining that I could play this…
I’m just going to put it out there. I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to making videos. For the last six weeks, I’ve been experimenting and trying things out. Every time I get ready to publish a video, these fears swirl around…
What happens when you give students exemplars? Do they simply copy the pre-existing examples? Do they fail to take creative risks? Do they internalize the idea that their work must fit a previous model? Does it implicitly tell students “this is what it should look…
Subscribe to YouTube Channel I used to hate the word “innovative.” See those quotes right there around the word? Those are actually air quotes that I would use whenever I used the term. “It’s a buzzword,” I would say. “It’s overused,” I would point out….
I recently listened to a 99% Invisible podcast where they mentioned an excavation 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?…