Reflecting Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a reflective person. And among all the things that have fascinated me about the field of education is how we learn, and to some extent, how this body of growing knowledge may contradict classroom practices. I remember well thinking I had “how to learn” mastered by… Continue reading How we learn
Category: essays
Gamify?
In 2023 I began some intensive research around the topic of gamification. This topic seemed to have its heyday in the literature (books, articles) nearly a decade ago, with a seeming golden year around 2015. “Gameful design attempts to design interactive systems that serve (a) functional needs and (b) specific desired uses and effects of… Continue reading Gamify?
On Blogs
I often feel nostalgic at the end of every year. Not for what I did this year, per se, but it’s just a natural time for me to think about a lot of things, some of which are themes that attract themselves back into the front of my brain. Assuming that’s where fresh thoughts are… Continue reading On Blogs
Documenting Your Growth
I used to be an expert at a program on my computer. When I say expert, I don’t mean just good. I used Finale (music notation software) from version 1 (1988) heavily until 1999, completing a good solid decade of almost daily use of that program to write and arrange music. I knew it in… Continue reading Documenting Your Growth
Browser Bookmarks
One of the things I regret is not saving all of my chats and email from college. I remember learning how to download email at some point and kept copies of some of it on floppy disks. My many hours (days, weeks) on IRC was altogether lost. It was such a blow to lose that… Continue reading Browser Bookmarks
Memory and Scent
My Background I’m feel somewhat vulnerable for discussing this, but the topic is so fascinating to me, I feel like there is at least some benefit in putting some thoughts down about it. I have a strong affinity for smells; I can’t say I am in anyway unusual from other people in this regard, except… Continue reading Memory and Scent
Reflections on Teaching
My first year of teaching graphic communications and computer applications were intense experiences. I’d just graduated with a masters degree (in music) and suddenly I was thrown into a new job that I hadn’t precisely prepared for! But I had a lot of computer experience and I set about designing lessons on that experience as… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching
Curriculum as Jellybeans
Part of me wishes we could redesign our curriculum. Not mine, not any specific schools’, but all of it—by pouring jelly beans out on the table. I think maybe what we teach is as important question as how students will learn it. So some have the idea that mixing up traditional notions of “in school”… Continue reading Curriculum as Jellybeans
A time for courage
These are my own thoughts, written on time away from work. Some years ago I sat in a planning meeting with my colleagues—we all worked for a preK-12 school division in Virginia—and we were discussing the set of core values we would use in our next strategic plan. We’d done some work to identify our… Continue reading A time for courage
Florence
In college I took a music history course and it just so happened that our professor was an expert on the music of an Italian baroque composer named Claudio Monteverdi. We ended up spending a lot of time on early Italian baroque music and I can still remember the lectures about the Gonzagas, the Medici,… Continue reading Florence