Tag: Teaching

Design Thinking 2.0, Teacher Life

Your Normal School Structure & Mode of Operating Isn’t COVID-19 Compliant

Every classroom in the world has changed in some way during these last six months. Disinfectant wipes, spaced out desks and furniture removed just to name a few of those changes. But those examples aren’t how we change school operations to become COVID compliant. For months now, we have needed to re-evaluate how we operate our schools to be COVID compliant and we will need … Continue reading Your Normal School Structure & Mode of Operating Isn’t COVID-19 Compliant

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Teacher Life

Welcome New International School Teachers! Your journey is much like your students.

Welcome to the adventures you are about to begin! The First weeks are a blur as you learn how to shop, about the region you are in, trying out some words and phrases in a foreign language and even how toilets work in your new apartment! There’s so much to learn which is second only to the excitement and nerves you walk around with all … Continue reading Welcome New International School Teachers! Your journey is much like your students.

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Design Thinking 2.0, Teacher Life

Asking “Why” At Your School Can Be Dangerous. (Lean on a Design Process)

Forget simply trying to deal with Cow Paths, the sacristy of time and resources makes many schools an act-now-ask-questions-never environment. Schools have limited time for teachers work with peers as much of a teacher’s time is with students, rightly, but that creates an issue, “Is our teacher/peer time a place to consider and study our problems or a place to act quickly?” Sadly, organizing teacher … Continue reading Asking “Why” At Your School Can Be Dangerous. (Lean on a Design Process)

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Design Thinking 2.0

The “Cow Paths” of School Improvement & Maintenance – Design Thinking

“Society’s institutions change at a slow pace.” Bud Selig – “For the Good of the Game” Cows, deer, and other large animals carve a path in grass and earth from one point to another though repeated use. Should an obstacle appear along that path such as a tree falling across it, the cows will carve a bend in the path around the tree. This is … Continue reading The “Cow Paths” of School Improvement & Maintenance – Design Thinking

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Data & Team Building, Design Thinking 2.0

Design Assessments to Leverage Cognitive Bias

A group of middle school students are reading well below grade level, different schools take different approaches: School A: Baised and imprecise – These teachers love the latest unproven brain research, they want to train for brain balance, train vision one eye at a time, some want to meditate still a few others want to train brain stamina with reading. A theme exists, but is … Continue reading Design Assessments to Leverage Cognitive Bias

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Teacher Life

Give Your Student a Pencil – Ultimate Guide Why We Give Pencils, One Tweet at a Time

If you are reading edu-twitter, I’ll bet that you have seen a slow-burning debate over pencils or even this article from tolerace.org. More precisely, “Should teachers unconditionally give a student a pencil in class?” I have collected more than 100 Tweets and have curated the conversation with some amazing responses for you to enjoy. To create this article, I decided we must reside in one … Continue reading Give Your Student a Pencil – Ultimate Guide Why We Give Pencils, One Tweet at a Time

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Teacher Life

That Terrible Gamification Problem

An old and very bad idea I had was the gamification of the overland trails and something called the Indian Removal Act. Yes, I made the same mistake 20 years ago and is what John Meehan is selling today in his new book, “EDrenaline Rush.”  Yes, it is actually called Edrenaline Rush and this picture is from his Twitter Profile. And yes, you guessed it, … Continue reading That Terrible Gamification Problem

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Teacher Life

The Three Buckets of Reporting

Reporting student progress to parents is tricky and the daily work to make it happen can be laborious. Fortunately, making sense of the whole picture doesn’t have to be. The three buckets of reporting is a simple way to think about the three main modalities we have as teachers and schools to report to parents, with the buckets bein; report cards, individual pieces and portfolios. … Continue reading The Three Buckets of Reporting

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Design Thinking 2.0

Design thinking in education has a massive hole in it: the skills designers have.

This is not another article looking to take down a trend in education. No. This is a statement of how much further a great idea is still to come. Should Design Thinking, in capital letters, manage to survive the great pendulum of time and trends in education, then it needs itself to iterate. See, my call to a new universal design model as one example … Continue reading Design thinking in education has a massive hole in it: the skills designers have.

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Design Thinking 2.0

A New Universal Design in Education

Universal Means “For All” To understand what Universal Design is and where it comes from is to realize how limited the scope it has on education, even with Design Thinking being so trendy. While the last 30 years or so has seen the transformation of our school’s physical spaces accommodate physical needs more universally, our practices as educational professionals has often gone the opposite way, … Continue reading A New Universal Design in Education

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