Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Tag: design

  • Designing And Narrating a Dream House Tour in Spanish

    This semester, for a variety of reasons, I’m having the opportunity to teach two classes of introductory 5th grade Spanish in addition to our 5th and 6th grade Media Literacy classes. 5th graders at our school take a semester of Spanish and a semester of French, and based on those experiences decide which language to…

  • Inspired by Ohio Student Interactive Scratch Games

    I’m presenting and attending at the 2018 Ohio Educational Technology Conference in Columbus today and tomorrow, and this afternoon I stopped by the poster sessions outside the vendor hall. I met several different Ohio high school students who have been learning to create interactive games using the free Scratch programming language and MakeyMakey controllers. This is…

  • Minecraft Halloween Challenge: Lessons Learned

    Yesterday Dr. Glen Emerson (@emerson_glen) and I, along with four other teachers and my Minecraft-guru daughter, Rachel, facilitated an evening “Minecraft Halloween Challenge” for students at our school. We had 61 students sign up and 59 participated, in two different sessions from 4 – 6 pm and 7 – 9 pm. The kids had a…

  • Opening Tinkercad 3D Designs in Minecraft

    I’m serving as a “Minecraft Consultant” to our 6th grade Social Studies teacher (Sara Zedlitz) and middle school librarian (Michaela Freeland) who are collaborating for a second year on an awesome 3D design and 3D printing project that is part of a study on ancient Rome and Roman structures. Yesterday I helped students who had designed…

  • Design Thinking Takeaways from Our #k12onlineconf Panel

    Last Friday after school I had an opportunity to facilitate a 60 minute panel discussion about “design thinking” with Brad Ovenell-Carter (@Braddo) in Vancouver, BC, Canada and Brian Lockwood (@BrianLockwood) in Copenhagen, Denmark for the K12 Online Conference (@k12online). In this post, I’ll share some of my learning points and takeaways from the panel discussion.

  • 2 Great (and free) Ways to Learn About Design Thinking

    The free K12 Online Conference (@k12online) is continuing this year with short “mini-conferences.” Last week John Spencer’s (@spencerideas) keynote for the “Design Thinking” strand was published. The video is just over 30 minutes long, and provides a practical introduction to both design thinking and how it can be used to transform learning in your classroom. I…

  • David Jakes on Learning Spaces (April 2016)

    David Jakes (@djakes) is not only one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, he’s also an amazingly knowledgeable and articulate educator with fantastic insights into the design and redesign of learning spaces. He recently spent two years working with The Third Teacher (@thethirdteacher) helping organizations worldwide design and redesign learning spaces, and he’s continuing work in…

  • Managing WordPress Installations in CPANEL (Monday Sept 28th)

    If you are a WordPress user or interested in WordPress, come to the FREE OKC WordPress Users Group on Monday, September 28th at Oklahoma Christian University (OC) in Edmond. The meetup starts at 7 pm. I’ll be presenting on the topic, “Managing WordPress Installations in CPANEL.” Some of the topics I plan to address include: What…

  • Furniture Quest for a Collaborative Classroom

    I’m in the Dallas, Texas, area this weekend (in Allen, specifically) serving as a chauffeur for my in-laws, who are visiting family. I’m also, however, on a furniture quest for my wife, as she seeks to create more spaces in her elementary classroom for collaboration and engaged learning. Yesterday I spent a couple hours at…

  • Great Class Castle Build in MinecraftEDU

    This afternoon after school we had our first meeting of “Makers Club” at our school for the semester. Generally we learn something new together and then students break up to work on different projects in our STEM classroom “Maker Studio.” Today, however, we opted to build a 64 x 64 block castle together (or at…