Over the past year or so I have moved my line of research into teacher creativity particularly focusing on ideas related to trans-disciplinary creativity and what that means for teaching and learning in the 21st century. In this effort I am joined by an awesome group...
Posts related to: Philosophy
The attention economy and the future of education
Peter Hershock is an education specialist at the East-West Center in Honolulu and author of Buddhism in the Public Sphere. He was recently interviewed by Matt Bieber of The Wheat and Chaff. I found this interview fascinating, particularly the first half which spoke to...
Is TPACK fundamentally flawed? A quick response
Richard Olsen over in his blog has an extended posting titled The TPACK Framework is fundamentally flawed. It is a long and thoughtful post and I recommend everyone to read it. I have posted a short response to his posting (it is under moderation but should show up in...
Walking away from Happy Valley
I have been haunted the past week or so with the scandal enveloping Penn State. Much as been written about it already - and I really have nothing fundamentally new to offer to this discussion. What I did want to share was a parallel that struck me recently about these...
New video from ITEC
I was recently at the Iowa Technology & Education Connection (ITEC) conference in Des Moines IA. I had a wonderful time meeting old friends and making some new ones. I was also asked to be part of a video that would be shared with ITEC members and other online...
Deep-play, creativity, design and teaching with technology: New journal article
I am extremely proud of what we do as a part of our Master's in Ed Tech (MAET) program. It is a unique program and over the years we have worked hard to make it a multi-faceted and unique experience for your students. Over the next few weeks I (with some help from...
Creativity is just connecting things
Steve Jobs retired as CEO of Apple this past week. The Wall Street Journal marked this event by creatingSteve Job's Best Quotes compendium. There are all worth reading - but a couple stood out for their connection to this course. Creativity is just connecting things....
The intangibles of teaching
Jim Garrison and A. G. Rud have a wonderful article on TCRecord on Reverence in Classroom Teaching. Though, reverence may be "too exalted a word to associate with the practical and often mundane activities of teaching," it appears to me that ignoring these deeper...
Technologies “R us: A great essay by Adam Gopnik
This morning I was at the doctor's office and picked up a dated (February, 2011) New Yorker magazine and discovered a great essay by Adam Gopnik: The Information: How the Internet gets inside us. I am not sure how I missed this the first time around but Gopnik does a...
The one rule of teaching
Pauline Kael is regarded to be one of the best film reviewers to have ever lived. Sam Sacks has a piece on Kael in which he describes her style of film review, one based less on academic nitpicking and the presence (or absence) of directorial flourishes than on her...
Rethinking Ed Tech Research…
I have been a huge fan of Don Norman ever since I first ran into his book on the Psychology of Everyday Things (which he later renamed as The Design of Everyday Things, and the story behind that name change is worth reading as an excellent example of design). Don...
When tech comes first: The Khan Academy as leading pedagogical change
As I go around the country talking about the TPACK framework, one of the questions that is always put to me is, about which comes first when planning a lesson, content, pedagogy or technology. The standard answer is that content comes first since it is only after we...
Learning Games & TPACK @ Drexel: Video now online
Back in January I was invited to speak at the Drexel Learning Games Network (DGLN) seminar series. As I had written in my original post (TPACK & Games @ Drexel), DLGN is the brainchild of Aroutis Foster, former graduate student, now rising star academic and...
Creativity, TPACK and Trans-disciplinary Learning for the 21st Century
Over the past few years my scholarly focus has shifted into areas related to teacher creativity and transdisciplinary learning. I see this as being the next step in my research work. Though I have been thinking quite a bit about this, have applied to to my teaching...
This is your brain on technology!
May years ago I wrote an essay titled On becoming a website. It was about my experience on teaching online and I suggested somewhat facetiously that in order to be a good teacher online I needed to actually "become" the course website! I started the essay by...
Txting develops spelling skills, how gr8
Scott Graden is Superintendent of Saline Area Schools and a blogger. He recently posted about a study that indicated that texting helps students develop vocabulary skills. Though he was skeptical of the finding, I am not sure I was as surprised. He cited a news story...
Models of design, creativity and more…
The Dubberly Design Office has created a series of models of innovation, play and design. These are terrific resources and I just found out about them by chance. I see these as being quite significant in the classes I teach, including CEP817: Learning Technology by...
Creativity in Las Vegas
I was recently invited to present a keynote address at the 21st Century Instructional Technology Conference (titled Elements of Technology) at the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clark County is the 5th largest school district in the country with...
Rethinking homework, some thoughts…
Shelly Blake-Plock over at TeachPaperLess has a great post about homework and how it can be structured to act as a "cliffhanger." As he says: These days, the homework I give isn't based on some arbitrary idea of how much work a kid should do 'at home' to reinforce...
On writing less badly
I just came across an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled, 10 tips on How to Write Less Badly [H/T Geekpress]. It is not that I agreed with every point being made there but a couple of them (To become a writer, write!; Find a voice, don't just get...
Jumpstart Repurposing
I have often talked of repurposing as being key to creativity, particularly for teachers using new technologies. (See previous postings on this topic here and here, and here and here.) Imagine my surprise when this past Sunday's comics-page had a comic on this very...
Demotivational Posters II
A few weeks ago I posted a note about an assignment I gave my students in the on-campus version of the MAET program. They had completed an unit on motivation and had watched the RSA / Daniel Pink video and their task was was to create demotivational posters, (along...
On breaking the rules (and words)
My daughter on her blog has a new poem / haiku called Sweat, a haiku with one glich. She is in India right now where the temperatures are easily in the 90's - which I guess explains the genesis of the poem. What was more interesting, to me however, was the manner in...
Cool i-Images at MICDS
I just spent a day at MICDS in St. Louis talking with a small but select group of teachers about creativity in teaching, the role of big ideas, the meaning of TPACK, the importance of trans-disciplinary learning (among other things). What a wonderful way of spending...
Nothing is original (great quote)
Unoriginal Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds,...
Dabbling to see: A rant
My friend and colleague Leigh Wolf forwarded me this article on Edward Tufte: The Many Faces (And Sculptures) Of Edward Tufte. I have been a fan of information design guru Edward Tufte's work for years (decades?). I love his emphasis on clarity and simplicity in...
Going cuckoo!
Three different news-stories/articles came to my notice today all connected by the infamous brood parasite the cuckoo. The first is a part of Olivia Judson's blog (on the NYTimes) on biology and life (read Cuckoo! Cuckoo! here), the second is is about how scientists...
Martin Gardner, RIP
Martin Gardner, 1914 - 2010 Martin Gardner died five days ago. Gardner was an influential writer about mathematics and was one of the greatest influences on me (and my friends) as I was growing up. His recreational mathematics column was the main reason I subscribed...
Failure has to be an option
I just read this great interview with Diane Ravitch on Slate.com (The wrong stuff). Diane Ravitch started out under George H.W. Bush as a strong supporter for NCLB (and all that goes with it, educational testing, school choice, charter schools etc. etc. etc.)....
No excuses! Veja du (or don’t you)
Excusado by Edward Weston I have written earlier about the idea of veja du (which ended up becoming an assignment in my creativity class). To recap: ... if déjà vu is the process by which something strange becomes, abruptly and surprisingly familiar, véjà du is the...