What Can We Learn from the Printing Press? — Why do we need innovation in schools? Well, for one, the current state of the US education system is a frequent subject of critique. Sir Ken Robinson for one has called it a factory model and he is not wrong. Most US high schools were developed at the end of…

I am sitting in a coffee shop in southern Salt Lake City passing the time before my afternoon flight home. I just completed a week of backpacking in the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park. I am writing this piece to share some stories of my adventure, and hopefully convey…

You Need the Debugging Mindset to Make Progress — This past Sunday, I was in the process of preparing sourdough pizza. It has become a tradition on Sundays in my family to bake a pie from scratch for dinner. I love to eat pizza and I find preparing it to be a therapeutic way to finish the weekend and…

The invention of the computer was a monumental change to the course of human civilization. It has transformed practically everything we do and think. Every discipline of study, every industry, most aspects of our lives have been changed due to this singular invention. So when people were thinking about how…

At the heart of educational innovation is the teacher. Strong teachers create magical worlds of learning that are powerful, meaningful and memorable. But, how do teachers develop their process to create meaningful learning environments. I was talking about this idea with my wife who recently became a school librarian. She…

Experiential learning is not a new concept in education. It at least dates back to John Dewey, a celebrated proponent of education and student-centered approaches at the beginning of the 20th century. Dewey advocated for student-centered pedagogy because the student experience is what drives all learning. Later in the century…

The word innovation often makes me think about design thinking. This year I have the pleasure of co-teaching a course entitled Design Thinking with a colleague Tak Cheung. In the course, we sometimes use the word innovation to describe the outcome of design thinking. More often we focus on the…

What is innovative teaching? The word innovation makes you think of a breakthrough, something big and involved. There are many examples on the internet of exciting complex projects in the classroom that describe themselves as innovative. These examples can be fun to read and even inspirational. However, sometimes in…

Why would someone undertake a solo hike climbing 48 mountains in one continuous trip, covering 235 miles of the most rugged landscape that New Hampshire has to offer? Could it be that I wanted to find solace in the wake of the death of my father, the one who first…