I often get asked to do short design sprints with leadership teams and teaching teams. One of the major areas to focus on is having people talk about REAL problems,…
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When my students were doing the 20% Project (Genius Hour) in my class we had an “Epic Fail Board” (inspired by a number of people) where they would pin up…
I’m releasing a new book into the world very soon. It is different from any other book I’ve ever written. It is different in format (it is a daily read…
Note: The following is an extended excerpt from my upcoming book, Empathy Every Day: How to Listen, Learn, and Lead with Empathy. It is filled with 366 daily stories, vignettes,…
*Note: Closed Captioning is available on this YouTube video. Today in this short video (and podcast episode), we’re going to be talking about empathy. Yes, empathy. I’m working on a…
In the 1930’s there was a young boy who had become addicted to and obsessed with eating sugar. His mother decided to get help and took the long and hot journey with her son…
Last year over 100,000 students from four different continents participated in our third annual Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and teachers shared and launched their creative projects all…
Let me try to paint this picture. We were sitting in our school conference room on a Skype call with a Norwegian company, First Scandinavian, who creates and runs Newton…
Reminder: This year’s Global Day of Design is on May 6, 2019. We already have over 75,000 learners signed up to participate! When John and I wrote LAUNCH, one of…
Last year over 60,000 students from 600+ schools, in over 12 countries and four different continents participated in our second annual Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and…
I’m sharing out my process below for writing my new book, The PBL Playbook: A Guide to ACTUALLY Doing Project-Based Learning. I used design thinking as a framework to write the book…
Many teachers have done the spaghetti and marshmallow challenge in the classroom and called it a STEM project. It’s a great activity, but is it really a STEM activity? Sure there’s…
The Global Day of Design just wrapped up on May 2nd. If you want to see what happens when 80,000+ students embrace design thinking, check out the Twitter stream and…
This is a guest-post written by a middle school teacher in my district, Annemarie Catalano. This year has been a big push to create a “maker culture” within our district….
When I was in 3rd grade my best friend Mark and I built a treehouse out of wood scraps we found in the forest behind his house. We were makers….
In 9th grade, I cut my thumb on a saw in wood shop and had to get stitches. It wasn’t too bad… However, that was the last year I took…
My daughter lowered her eyes, looked at me, and said, “I can’t do it.” I looked back and asked her again to put one foot on the board, push off…
Last April, we had over 50,000 students participate in the Global Day of Design (and next year’s GDD is slated for May 2nd). It was powerful to watch students embrace design thinking…
A fresh start. Isn’t that what so many want in education? Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, administrator, or community member, we all have our opinions on what school…
Our new book, LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, has been out for almost a month now and the response has…
When my students were doing the 20% Project (Genius Hour) in my class we had an “Epic Failure Board” (inspired by a number of people) where they would pin up…
Thanks to everyone for making our new book, LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, a #1 bestseller on Amazon this weekend!…
LAUNCH is here!!! Get your copy on Amazon (click here). It’s here! My new book, LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student…
My daughter had her first “lip sync” performance tonight at a school event. Her and a bunch of first-grade friends had been practicing a routine for “Call Me Maybe” for…
When I was in high school I spent most of my time playing sports (football and basketball) and worrying about my so-called social life. In school, I rarely was allowed…
This is the third post in the “Design Thinking in the Classroom” series. Read the first and second post here. In David and Tom Kelley’s book, Creative Confidence, the authors…
In the first post of this series, I shared my biggest fear as an educator (being ineffective and my students not caring about learning). We looked at the role choice, inquiry,…
Wow! It was an amazing rush to see so many students making, designing, building, and creating yesterday for the first ever Global Day of Design. Students and teachers did a…
A little over a year ago, John Spencer and I tossed around an idea for a book called The Creative Classroom. Given our combined experience with design thinking (as educators, leaders,…
When I was in 3rd grade my best friend Mark and I built a treehouse out of wood scraps we found in the forest behind his house. We were makers….
While John Spencer and I were developing the LAUNCH Cycle, we came up with a few areas that were likely stumbling blocks in the creative (design-thinking inspired) process. One of…
Design thinking is a flexible framework for getting the most out of the creative process. It is used in the arts, in engineering, in the corporate world, and in social…
In the movie, The Martian, there was a quote in the last scene that really hit home, when thinking about my role as a teacher and leader. It comes from…
My daughter lowered her eyes, looked at me, and said, “I can’t do it.” I looked back and asked her again to put one foot on the board, push off with…
I cringe when people ask me, “Are you handy?” Partly because I don’t consider myself to be the best with tools, but also because it is asking me to judge whether…
