Teaching is not always easy. And learning can be a struggle for many of our students. As educators, we are called to this back and forth process of teaching and…
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I want to tell you a story. During the mid 19th century the city of Chicago was in crisis. The elevation of the growing metropolis was not much higher than…
In our last post, we dove into a three-step system to get students to do the talking. Getting them to open up and do the majority of talking (and learning)…
Ahh, IKEA. If you are anything like me, you probably have a love/hate relationship with IKEA. I love walking through their store, putting our kids in childcare, and seeing all…
Creativity isn’t limited to STEM or STEAM or even the arts. Every time a student is designing, building, tinkering, and problem-solving, it becomes a chance to develop a maker mindset….
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…
Imagine you’ve been in education for 7, 11, 15 or even 25 years. In each of those years, you have grown as a professional, learned new technologies, shifted with the…
Last year over 40,000 students and 450 schools from 5 continents participated in the very first Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and teachers shared and…
Over 10,000 students from 329 schools officially signed up to participate in this year’s MARS Challenge project. The videos, advertisements, and projects that were submitted are unbelievable. Students designing their…
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…
A week ago at this time my family and I were packing our bags to head home from Disney World. As the kids played in the pool, my wife and I…
I could hear my oldest daughter come rushing down the stairs last week as I arrived home from work. My two youngest pulled and gripped on me as I picked…
I failed a lot this year (you can read about them all here in my failure report), but also had some amazing successes with teachers and students at our 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…
In the widely known “invisible gorilla” experiment, volunteers watched a video of different groups tossing a ball and were asked to count the number of times the ball was tossed. In a surprising…
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…
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,…
It is almost time! Tomorrow, on April 26th, 2016, thousands of students from around the world will participate in the very first Global Day of Design. Over 350 schools from…
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….
Joanne’s mother had died a few years earlier, and now she was a single parent (recently divorced) with no job, living off welfare benefits so she could provide for her…
Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived for many years at the Washington DC National Zoo. For most of those years her home was in the old lion house—a…
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been asked the same question multiple times after speaking, “Do you still believe Genius Hour and 20% Projects are the best way to engage…
Note: This is the final article in a four-part series answering the question, “Does education really need to change?“. You can read the first, second, and third posts here. It…
I leaned over the shoulder of a student in the library. She was quietly working with headphones in, and completely focused. What caught my attention is that she would continually…
Note: I’m halfway through a series of blog posts answering the question, “Does education really need to change?” This is like a half-time post. It is hopefully an unexpected surprise!…
Michael Port shares a story (in his book) about a donkey, an old man, and a boy: An old man, a boy and a donkey were going to town. The…
A 2001 study found that 92 percent of teachers believe classroom design has a strong impact on students’ learning and achievement. The study goes on to state the following: These statistics demonstrate…
When we look at what research says about becoming better at something, two pieces of evidence stand out. First, we must have clarity on what our goals are, and where…
It is a new school year and I’m so excited to see many teachers and schools starting Genius Hour or 20% Projects for the first time! As I mentioned to…
Last year over 2000 educators signed up to learn more about classroom design, as we launched the first ever Classroom Cribs challenge! We had four amazing grand finalist winners and…
In the 14th century, the term “genius” was regarded as a guardian spirit. Yet a person with “unworldly” talent was said to have a genius, because his/her gift (of genius) being a supernatural act. No one…
Last week I asked you to fill out a survey about professional development. Many of you (342 to be exact) took time to fill out this survey and share your…
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…
I want to build an app. And I need your help in creating it. I know you may think, “He’s not talking about me”, but yes, I am talking about…
Professional development is needed now more than any other time. With the change of pace in learning, and the changing lives of our learners, we must teach different to meet…
Students continue to fall into the same trap year after year with traditional schooling. They rarely have a chance to choose their learning path in school, and routinely treat school…
It’s almost here! TEDxPennsburgED is finally happening in one week, and we’ll be broadcasting it live to the world (at Upper Perkiomen High School) on May 7th from 12:30-4:30pm (EST)….
What is flow? It is a term and concept you’ve probably heard before. It’s also a feeling or state that you’ve had many times in your life. We often call…
“This atmosphere of excitement, arising from imaginative consideration, transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact: it is invested with all its possibilities. It is no longer a…
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ― Steve Jobs There are moments of…
In 1915 Albert Einstein sent a letter to his son, Albert. Einstein was living with his second wife, and had not seen either of his two sons for quite some time….
And just like that…it was over. I’d pitched the 20% time project to my students with only a few days of planning, but it turned out to be the project…
It’s no secret we live in a consumption driven culture. Millennials spend 18 hours a day consuming media (much of this is done while multi-tasking so the number of actual…
I’ve heard this question in various forms many different times: How is technology going to save education? Radio and TV were going to save education, but of course they didn’t. They…
“Students engaged in direct experience with materials, unforeseen obstacles, and serendipitous discoveries may result in understanding never anticipated by the teacher.” ― Sylvia Libow Martinez, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in…
