“Schools kill creativity”
– Sir Ken Robinson
From one of my favorite TED Talks, and now a great “advertisement.” It’s one of those great reminders that teachers need to be mindful of the difference between intention and impact, to borrow a phrase. …
- Do I care about this item? No? Skip. Yes? Keeping reading.
- Do I …
Transformative Uses of the iPad slidedeck.
I was invited to give a keynote address at the 2014 Click conference, hosted by and at Castilleja in Menlo Park, on the topic of …
Paid Web Services
Darwinian principles govern the life of web services as well as the animal kingdom. For the Internet, those businesses that can remain profitable are sustainable; those without a viable business model die off or are cannibalized by other companies. …
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
— <p>Samuel Beckett, <a href=“http://www.samuel-beckett.net/w_ho.htm">Worstward Ho</a>.</p>
<p>I dig it.</p> …
Year-End Performance Review
Below is the written follow-up from my Principal for 2013–2014:
Eric,Thanks for our end of the year meeting, I appreciated the conversation and talking about the year.I am grateful for all you do in the classroom and with Ed Tech and realize …
“‘Creative block’ – what a dumb term, just totally invented. Listen, there’s no excuses. If you’re on the clock, make it happen.”
— Aaron James Draplin.
File this under: Things I wish I knew when I was younger. …
I am no athlete
I did not start running until I was 30; and I’m nowhere even close to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hours. Further, I have what Howard Gardner would describe as very low kinesthetic intelligence. These two factors combine, meaning I have neither …
Dealing With Emotionally Challenging Days
Yesterday, I asked folks on Facebook how they deal with emotionally hard days at work, and I received far more responses than I expected. First, without revealing more than I can, an explanation of the question; then a reflection on the responses and …
The most valuable compensation for working at a startup as opposed to a “normal job” is a dramatically higher rate-of-learning
— <p><a href=“https://medium.com/p/56dddc17fa42">Kyle …
This is Pam Selle’s talk at Ignite Philly on the topic of work-life balance; she called it Go the fuck home. Her most important reminder to all of us is that we are a factor of …
… honor is not the same as dignity. One might even say: honor is surplus dignity. It is that heightened consciousness of power, and its dangers, that comes from having stripped away the power and dignity of others; or at the very least, from the …
I, _________________, hereby swear to abandon all fear; to question everything; to trust in myself; to honor those before me as I excel, and to support those who follow as they ascend. I swear that I will never accept another’s standard for success, …
Some good fucking career advice.
<ol> <li>What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?</li> <li>What if I fail — how will I recover?</li> <li>What if I do nothing?</li> <li>What if I succeed?</li> <li>What’s …
Cobain wasn’t a monster, ever. At his worst, he was a mess, but so are most of us, only we get to act out our shit among friends, and not in front of people who think our every woe is a generational signifier. I mean, Cobain’s …
Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.
- Mark Pincus
At school, we call these Tech Tuesdays, which is …
Pro-Social Social Psych Activity
I barely remember how I came up with this idea for a SocialPsych activity[1] which was new this year. The idea was for students to use the principles of persuasion covered in the chapter to convince other students to donate $1 along with them to …
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom
Writing for The Financial Times, Katie Roiphe, a journalism professor at NYU, writes:
There is a particular vitality in anxiety, a sort of nervy power that one can’t say is fun, exactly, but is nonetheless slightly addictive. It can be productive, …
Intellectual Sprawl, the good and the bad
Michael Lopp, better known as Rands, describes his process for reading widely and making connections across topics:
I’ve started a significant mental exercise that looks like this:
from Life’s Little Instruction Book.
As a teacher — of both adolescents and adults, albeit in different contexts — this has been a painful lesson to learn … repeatedly.
<p><img …In a continuing effort to make AP Psychology more experiential, we had a general class discussion about Norms (starting with the topic of choosing which urinal is acceptable to use) …