PD Conference Design

It’s no secret that the majority of PD conferences for educators tend to follow a “one size fits all” model that tries to make everyone happy. While fun, these conferences aren’t always the best use of educator time and money, and at least some of us think we can do better.…

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Let’s Design a School!

Crossposted at SlowchatED.

If you enjoy Twitter conversations on education and you’re not yet familiar with #slowchatED, I highly recommend having a look. Rather than juggling questions and answers at the breakneck pace of many popular discussions, the #slowchatED model offers the opportunity for conversations that may benefit from a little more reflection.

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Roman Architecture in Minecraft

The caldarium in a Roman bath

Last year, as our school began its 1:1 BYOL program in the 7th grade, I had the opportunity to redesign our Latin IA course to incorporate technology within the Latin program. In doing so, I redeveloped our introductory level curriculum around thematic “modules” that are each split between core content work and a project devoted on some cultural component, e.g.…

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What if we ask more questions?: 2014 Reflections

Over the course of the last year, I’ve changed the approach with which I participate in conferences, thanks in part to a number of amazing conference experiences (e.g., FUSE14) and a formative conversation I had with +Karl Lindgren-Streicher and +Kristen Swanson at #cue14 last spring (Karl has also written on the conversation).…

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DT in the Latin Classroom

Now that I’ve working more with design thinking and have learned how powerful of a mindset it can be for creativity and innovation, I’ve been trying to infuse it into my Latin classrooms. It’s not always easy to move through the entire design thinking process in a Latin course, but I believe it can be done—and done well—in at least a few ways.…

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Grading Participation?

Today, I had an unexpected and quite interesting conversation about grades, including how we evaluate participation, and so I wanted to record some ideas here for further discussion. In the past, while teaching both as a TA and in my first few years at the secondary level, I’ve always built a participation component into my overall schema.…

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Building d.Teams with DEEPid

N.B.: This post can also be found on the #dtk12chat community page.

I’ve been talking with more people about design thinking (DT) lately, and the question about how to do DT within classes consistently resurfaces. It’s a great question, and, to be honest, I myself have been thinking for quite some time now about how to incorporate DT into our Latin program.…

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Cultivating a Gratitude Practice

Latin IA Gratitude Notes

Following the CUE Manhattan Beach Rock Star camp, friend and colleague +Karl Lindgren-Streicher reflected on the incredible experience, sharing his gratitude with a number of influential people who have helped him along his journey. It’s a great post, and now that I have spent the summer reflecting about many of the changes sweeping through our school and my role within them, I want to follow suit and start developing a regular gratitude practice of my own, beginning with how I ended up where I am today.…

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FUSE14 and Designing for Engagement

Sometime last fall I stumbled onto design thinking (DT) and was immediately drawn to its grounding in working with and for people. DT, to put it simply, is a process (or, if you prefer, the DT “mindset”) that can be summed up as “people-centered problem solving with a bias toward action.”…

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ISTE2014 and Collaboration

After a week in Atlanta for FUSE14 and ISTE2014, my head is spinning. It was an extraordinary experience, and I learned so much that it’s going to take months to sort it all out. Most of all, it was a invigorating and inspiring to spend quality time in person with so many amazing people (thanks +Dominique Dynes for the picture below!).
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