Today I had the pleasure of watching (and reading) Howard Rheingold’s interview with Unflattening author Nick Sousanis. Like Howard, I am a big fan of Nick’s work- not only for the content (which is phenomenal), but for the essence of it- the “ness” I mentioned in an earlier post. I love the way Nick maintained a process journal of sorts on his “Spin Weave Cut” site and always points people there to be a part of his “living” work. That is what the #showyourwork movement (via

When I was hangin’ with Alec Couros (@courosa) this summer at BLC14 in Boston I was thrilled to hear about this “Connected Courses” MOOC with an all star cast (Michael Wesch, Helen Keegan, Mimi Ito, to name a few and …wait for it…the THREE MAGI : Alan Levine (@cogdog), Jim Goom (@jimgroom) , and Howard Rheingold (@hrheingold). I’ve been dabbling for years, as a high school teacher, to not only develop a truly connected course (Howard interviewed me about that this year), but

A while back the lovely Wes Fryer (we’ve never met, except on Twitter, but I’m the type that definitely counts that as “real life”) asked me to share my thoughts about maintaining the spark for innovation. He’s crowdsourcing a keynote, which is something I’ve done in the past and loved it (so much so that I plan to do it again) I like to organize any “tips” I give into short collections of alliterated words – that, and rhyming or assonance, just seems to work for me both as a

One of my favorite quotes on my classroom’s massive white glossy “inspiration wall” is from John Cage: “There is no win, there is no fail, there is only make” My personal goal this year is to get students involved in the creative process as much as possible, shifting away from consuming and stressing the importance of producing, contributing, making, and sharing on a daily basis. In addition to their regular steady diet of project-based assessments, I’m trying to have several

It’s been a few days since returning from my third (and probably most inspiring) year at November Learning’s Building Learning Communities Conference (aka BLC13) at the exquisite Boston Park Plaza Hotel, which- as @Braddo pointed out upon arrival, has graciously included a portrait of me. All joking aside, I was thrilled to have attended, albeit alone (but, with Twitter, is one ever really alone?). For me, BLC is the ultimate conference…not only is it pedagogy (versus technol